The roar of engines from the Rockot launch vehicle split the air as it lifted off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia on 30 June 2003. The rocket was 30m tall and had been chartered by the German company Eurockot Launch Services. But instead of carrying one large satellite into orbit, the Rockot was carrying eight smaller ones.
At the time, no one paid it much attention. After all, it wasn’t the launch of a flagship, billion-dollar mission. Yet in hindsight we can see that’s exactly what made the launch so important – perhaps even a watershed in the way we use and explore space.
Some of the satellites lofted into orbit that day were tiny CubeSats, with dimensions of just 10 x 10 x 10cm. Made of standardised parts, CubeSats are relatively quick and simple to construct. When they were conceived in the late 1990s, they were thought of as educational tools to teach students the basics of how to build satellites. The idea was that the students would take the knowledge they gained on CubeSats and apply it to the large spacecraft of the traditional satellite industry. And while some did just that, others used their experience to take on an entirely different challenge: to use the miniature satellites for something more than just education.
“There are now some very smart people in Europe and around the world who have set themselves a challenge to miniaturise technology such that it can fit into a very small volume. People refer to it as thinking inside the box,” says Roger Walker from the European Space Agency (ESA).
Denne historien er fra New Year 2021-utgaven av BBC Focus - Science & Technology.
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Do We Finally Know How the Egyptian Pyramids Were Built? - A number of breakthrough studies are beginning to paint a picture of how these wonders of the world were built, but much of the story still remains a mystery...
A number of breakthrough studies are beginning to paint a picture of how these wonders of the world were built, but much of the story still remains a mystery...How the Egyptian pyramids were built has long been a mystery. Constructed as tombs for the pharaohs over 4,000 years ago, more than 100 of them remain. The largest one, the Great Pyramid of Giza, was originally 147m tall (482ft). It's made up of about 2.3 million stone blocks, each weighing between 2.5 and 15 tonnes, and would have had to be transported to the building site and lifted into place with techniques available at the time. To put this into context, it's akin to lifting a double-decker London bus to the top of St Pauls Cathedral a few million times.
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