Student satellite demonstrates drag sail to de-orbit old hardware
A tiny satellite with a drag chute built by a team of students has been held up as one small possible solution to the thorny issue of space junk caused by defunct hardware cluttering up Earth’s orbit.
The satellite itself is a 3U Cubesat . According to details given by the university, it includes a $10 Arduino microprocessor, 65 AA Energizer lithium batteries and a variety of 3D printed parts produced with consumer-grade printers. However, it seems like the radio the satellite was equipped with failed to function, as no signal was ever received from the unit. The university is confident that the sail did deploy, however, as SBUDNIC’s observed orbital decay since then is greater than that of the of the other Cubesats deployed at the same time into comparable altitudes and orbits; its altitude is said to be approximately 30km below that of the reference grouping of satellites.
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