After the successful landing of NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars this month, space exploration is once again at the forefront of everyone's minds. While the rover goes about its mission on the red planet, there are plenty of other exciting projects happening closer
After the successful landing of NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars this month, space exploration is once again at the forefront of everyone's minds. While the rover goes about its mission on the red planet, there are plenty of other exciting projects happening closer to home.
One of those projects is the CubeSat Launch initiative (CSLI), in which nanosatellites built by teams across the United States are hitching a ride into orbit on rockets planned for upcoming launches. The satellites are around 4 inches long, have a volume of one quart and weigh in the region of 3 pounds.
In order for a project to be eligible to participate in the CSLI, it must address aspects of science, exploration, technology development, education or operations.
This is all very interesting, but what does it have to do with Android? Well, within CubeSat, there's a smaller project known as PhoneSat. The idea behind PhoneSat is that engineers working on these satellites will use small consumer electronics that are available to everyone. As you may have guessed from the name, the team will be using smartphones as the main component in its nanosatellites, as well as a few other necessary components.
Of course, you can't simply send a phone into space and expect it to work without any issues. As with any project, testing procedures must be put in place so that the team knows how much a smartphone can do whilst it's over 100km in the air.
So what is the smartphone of choice for engineers working on the PhoneSat project? The first model, PhoneSat 1.0, actually uses a Google Nexus One.
Now, 