Near Earth Orbit for Only $250 Per Week

Sarah Mitroff, reporting for Wired:

[Peter] Platzer has engineered a tiny satellite called the ArduSat, which runs on several programmable Arduino computers, is equipped with a camera to take photos of the Earth, and uses an UHF transceiver to send and receive data. The finished ArduSat satellite is roughly the size of a water bottle, 10 by 10 by 30 centimeters, and costs less than $1 million to build and launch.

A chance for nearly anyone to get access to a satellite, or just more space junk? Depends on how successful they are in booking their time slots.

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