KickTraq

The crowd-funded KickSat satellite launched to space in April, but it might burn up in Earth's atmosphere before completing its mission. (Read More)

Because of a technical glitch, the KickSat CubeSat may not be able to deploy its cargo of tiny "Sprite" satellites after all, Project Manager Zac Manchester, KD2BHC, announced on May 3. (Read More)

Hi Everyone, First off, sorry for the long delay in posting these photos. I'm finally back in the lab at Cornell after a long road trip from California. I'd like to extend another huge thank you to everyone at NASA Ames Research Center who helped me... (Read More)

Hi Everyone, This is a long overdue and very exciting post. Last Wednesday we finished integrating KickSat into it's P-POD (the pod it will ride inside during launch) at CalPoly in San Luis Obispo, California. Here's a video of the big moment: You'll... (Read More)

Hi Everyone, Sorry for another long gap between posts. We're pretty busy right now with only a few weeks left before KickSat is delivered for integration. I'll try to post more in the next few weeks to document the process. This week I'd like to... (Read More)

Hi Everyone, I just got back to California from Maker Faire in New York. We had a really great time showing off KickSat to the thousands of people who came through the NASA booth and we managed to take home an Educator's Choice ribbon. My favorite... (Read More)

Hi Everyone, I just got to the New York Hall of Science in Queens to help set up for Maker Faire. If you'll be at the faire this weekend, come visit us at the NASA booth! There will be lots of other cool space stuff in addition to KickSat and the... (Read More)

Hi Everyone, Sorry for the long lapse since my last post - we've been super busy. In the last few weeks we've finished building KickSat, gotten over 100 Sprites ready to fly and loaded into the deployer, and performed a whole bunch of testing... (Read More)

Hi Everyone, Yesterday I gave a presentation on KickSat at the SmallSat conference. You can see my slides online here, although unfortunately SpeakerDeck doesn't support videos. If you want to see the videos, you can download the original PowerPoint... (Read More)

Hi Everyone, Sorry I didn't get a chance to post this yesterday - we've been pretty busy. Here's something fun we managed to do this week: We laser engraved all of the inscriptions from our backers on the outside of KickSat's aluminum structure. I'll... (Read More)

Hi Everyone, This week we reached the very exciting milestone of receiving the final flight unit Sprites from the board house. You might notice a few differences between these Sprites and previous designs. Most obviously, they have solar cells on the... (Read More)

Hi Everyone, It's officially crunch time around here. We're in the process of building the KickSat mothership in time for our final delivery in September - less than 2 months away! Here's where we are right now: We have the structure built along with... (Read More)

Inside an old storage warehouse in an abandoned shipyard in Copenhagen, Kristian von Bengston and Peter Madsen have been building a one-man rocket ship they intend to send on a 15-minute, parabolic trip to the edge of space and back. Von Bengston and Madsen’s non-profit, private space agency is called Copenhagen Suborbitals, and is probably the most extreme do-it-yourself project in the world. Von Bengston is an architect and former NASA contractor. Madsen is an engineer who founded a DIY collective that built three submarines as a hobby. (Read More)