Endeavour Launch Introduces New Mini Spacecraft To Space

By: Syeed

The Los Angeles Times is reporting today that the Space Shuttle Endeavour brought some pretty interesting new tiny space crafts with it as it blasted off into space today.

The mini space crafts come courtesy of Cornell University, who’s Mason Peck headed up the team responsible for creating he little satellites. Which are being called ‘Sprite Spacecraft.’ The sprites are smaller and thinner than a US dime, they’re meant to spend the next few years in space and then return to earth with their data.

Here’s a bit taken from Cornell’s webpage on the craft:

“In collaboration with Sandia National Laboratories, we've developed our first prototype, dubbed "Sprite". Sprite uses a multi-chip module architecture to achieve a form factor of 2cm x 2cm x 2mm. Using matched filtering techniques, it can close a communications link from a 500km orbit. “

So basically what the Sprites are meant to do is mimic space dust so that they can travel huge distances without fuel in order to collect real-time information about space. Peck envisions these little sprite spacecraft launching in waves alongside other larger space shuttles in future missions.

Related Stuffs:

• Source: L.A. Times
• Official: Cornell University