Beanie Babies in Space

Here's the latest news from that final frontier: Adorable orbiting dogs! Pink pandas in flight! Sand-filled leopards and lions and ....

Well, actually not. Rather, their boxes have taken flight. Itty bitty cubes which may, in the not too distant future, provide critical information to help reduce the noise in space communication signals ... and thus increase the quality of sat video and phones and broadband services.

The device is something called a CubeSat. This may be old hat to all my space-cadet friends (you know who you are) but I had never heard of such a thing until I was chatting the other day with Dr. Pat Hynes, doyenne of the New Mexico Space Grant Consortium. In full verbal flight over some of her latest plans, she mentioned CubeSats.

"Huh?" said I.

"Beanie babies," she replied.

Riiiiight.

Turns out she is right. About five years ago, students from a variety of universities launched the very first CubeSats which essentially consisted of very small measuring devices inserted into beanie baby boxes. It was a great (and, given current space standards, very inexpensive) way to get students involved in space. Fast forward to today and the CubeSat movement has mushroomed into a hot new space frontier with dozens of universities and government agencies around the world pouring their time and (from the government side) money into the 10×10×10 centimeter picosatellites. (Which have morphed considerably from the original beanie baby boxes, but hey.)

Notable among the latest projects is one from the University of Michigan where grad and undergrad students are launching something they call the Radio Aurora Explorer (RAX) satellite. Designed to measure the energy flow in the ionosphere, the project aims to better understand the space weather which can impact space communications and thus the businesses of all things "Sky."