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Pastimes : Triffin's Market Diary -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Triffin who wrote (89)	2/11/2000 7:09:00 PM
From: Triffin	Respond to of 869

BC: PICOSATS Next-Gen satellite telcom networks ?? --------------------------------------------------------- Tiny U.S, satellites may be communications future By Michael Miller LOS ANGELES, Feb 11 (Reuters) - Two miniature satellites, not much bigger than cellular phones and using the same wireless technologies, have paved the way for the future of communications, scientists said on Friday. The satellites, the smallest ever to be sent into space, are known as ``picosats.' They were launched on Jan. 26 and weigh less than one half pound (226 grams), measuring just 4 inches (10 centimeters) by 3 inches (4.9 centimeters) by 1 inch (2.5 centimeters). The mission ended on Friday when their tiny batteries began running out of power. They had started their transmissions to Earth on Monday after being released from a ``mother' satellite, Aerospace Corp., which controlled the mission, said. The two tiny satellites proved their capability to receive and transmit signals from Earth, opening a new era of mini-satellites that would inevitably replace the many large and costly satellites circling the globe today, said Ernest Robinson, the mission project leader at Aerospace, an independent, nonprofit, El Segundo, Calif.,-based company that controlled the experiment. Rockwell International Corp.'s (NYSE:ROK - news) Science Center, which supplied the micro-machined silicon relays and wireless networking technologies, said the technologies promised to ``dramatically reduce the size, power and cost of future satellites used for such applications as telecommunications and weather imaging.' The picosats are seen as forerunners of an envisioned new breed of mini-satellites called ``nanosats,' which would be slightly larger than the picosats and would be sent into space in clusters to form mass communications centers. Robinson said finding the two tiny satellites in the vastness of space was, in itself, a major achievement, liking it to finding a needle in a haystack. The two craft were tethered by a thin wire into which was inserted thin strands of gold, allowing the U.S. Space Command's Space Surveillance Network to locate them, he said. The experiment also marked the first launch of the U.S. Air Force's new four-stage rocket made up of the Minuteman II Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) and the Pegasus XL launch vehicle. In addition, it was the first launch from the new commercial spaceport at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Another picosat mission is planned for mid-June when more mini-satellites will be jettisoned from a MightySat 2.1 satellite built by the Air Force Research Laboratory, and a third, more complex, mission is planned for 2003. Derek Cheung, Rockwell's vice president of Research at the Thousand Oaks-Calif., based Rockwell Science Center, said the company was, very pleased ``to see the successful application in space of technologies that also have many uses for government and industry here on Earth.' The satellite networking was accomplished using extremely low cost digital cordless telephone technology* modified for data communications and networking by Rockwell, he added.* EOM ------------------------------------------------------