The Weirdest Thing I Learned about the ARKYD Space Telescope
There are a lot of amazing technological innovations going into this pint-sized spacecraft. They want it to use the same optic to take pictures and transmit information to earth, which is pretty genius. They want to make literally hundreds of them to scatter around the solar system prospecting for high quality asteroids. They want them to be intelligent enough to decide for themselves which asteroids to study, and how to get from one asteroid to another.
But probably the weirdest thing I learned about the ARKYD 100 is that they designed it to be the size of carry-on luggage. Not as some engineering goal to keep it small, or a marketing goal to have a way to tell people how big it is when folded up, but because THEY WANTED A SIMPLE AND CHEAP WAY TO MOVE THEM FROM PLACE TO PLACE WHILE BEING ABLE TO KEEP AN EYE ON THEM!
They actually put them in the overhead bins on commercial flights instead of contracting specialized shipping!
According to Chris Voorhees, one of the coolest things he gets to do is take the prototypes through security at airports. To paraphrase what he said to me: “They just stare at it, and then you’re like, ‘Yeah…it’s a space telescope.’”
Yeah.
(via muchtoofullofsand)
