Blog Expert Post #4
April 8, 2014
Insights directly related to CubeSat Farm:
I was able to find a 23 page newsletter from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center published last year regarding CubeSats. The articles within the newsletter gave me tremendous insight. While the CubeSat standard was originally intended for academic purposes and low earth orbit flights, NASA has been seeking to expand this functionality. There is on going research on implementing the CubeSat format for advanced space science and exploration, as well as experiments and studies that are being conducted to potentially utilize CubeSats on deep space missions. Another key insight from the newsletter is that up until now, CubeSats have launched on rockets as “Secondary Payloads”. This means that they essentially take a low-priority back seat on launches. NASA’s Walls Flight Facility is working with launch providers to come up with a launch vehicle that is not only low cost, but that specializes in CubeSat launches for government, academia as well as private industry. This is also creating an interesting partnership with the Department of the Defense who is also interested in the development of a low cost dedicated CubeSat launch platform.
Insights related to space applications of 3d printing (not project related):
One area that I’m very passionate about regarding space exploration and colonization is public outreach. The reality of this kind of work is that without public support, there is no space program. The good news is, since space is not a program, its an actual place, it usually stirs up tremendous curiosity whenever the conversation comes up. One of the defending topics that space enthusiasts bring up to defend investments in space exploration is that of “spin-offs”. Spin-offs can be defined as unintended results, that are typically commercialized or become widespread, that resulted from a particular innovation. Some examples of this regarding space exploration technologies are GPS navigation for civilian drivers, algorithms used in breast cancer detection (thanks to the John Hopkins University and the Hubble Space Telescope), miniaturized integrated circuits (the processors in laptops and smartphones), and thousands of upon thousands of other examples.
An interesting 3d printing related spin-off I found is that in the use of outreach and education. A January 10, 2014 article from Space.com (http://www.space.com/24233-3d-printed-hubble-photos-blind-aas223.html) illustrates a wonderful example of how 3d printers are being used to create textured images of celestial objects to help the blind population learn about the universe. So far the results seem positive.
