Tag Archives: Spacecraft

In-Band Signaling: Quindar Tones

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So far in this brief series on in-band signaling, we looked at two of the common methods of providing control signals along with the main content of a transmission: DTMF for Touch-Tone dialing, and coded-squelch systems for two-way radio. For this installment, we’ll look at something that far fewer people have ever used, but almost everyone has heard: Quindar tones.

What’s a Quindar?

You may never have heard what Quindar tones are, but you’ve certainly heard them if you’ve ever seen any manned spaceflight videos. Quindar tones are those short beeps you hear when NASA is communicating with astronauts, as …read more

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Credit Card Sized Spacecraft Poised to Sail to Alpha Centauri

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As a space-faring species, we’ve done a fair job of exploring and exploiting our local neighborhood. We’re pretty good at putting people and machines into orbit, but our galactic-scale signature is pretty tiny. Our radio signals are no more than 100 light-years away, and our farthest physical artifact isn’t even a light-day away from us 40 years after it launched.

Clearly we need to do a better job of getting out there, and that’s the goal of Breakthrough Initiatives’ Starshot program, which aims to launch a nano-spacecraft to Alpha Centauri and get it there fast. The program aims to build …read more

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RainCube Spreads Its Umbrella

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There are times when a mechanism comes to your attention that you have to watch time and time again, to study its intricacies and marvel at the skill of its designer. Sometimes it can be a complex mechanism such as a musical automaton or a mechanical loom, but other times it can be a device whose apparent simplicity hides its underlying cleverness. Such a moment came for us today, and it’s one we have to share with you.

RainCube is a satellite, as its name suggests in the CubeSat form factor and carrying radar instruments to study Earthly precipitation. One …read more

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Ruggedizing A Cheap Camera For Spacecraft Testing

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Name the countries that house a manned space program. In order of arrival in space, USSR/Russian Federation, United States of America, People’s Republic of China. And maybe one day, Denmark. OK, not the Danish government. But that doesn’t stop the country having a manned space program, in the form of Copenhagen Suborbitals. As the tagline on their website has it: “We’re 50 geeks building and flying our own rockets. One of us will fly into space“. If that doesn’t catch the attention of Hackaday readers, nothing will.

For their rocket testing they need a lot of video feeds, …read more

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