Smartphone apps win spot on satellite launch

New Scientist : Four apps have won a place on a satellite called Strand-1. The winning apps were announced today by mission planners at the UK’s Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd and the Surrey Space Center. The nanosatellite, measuring just 30 x 10 x 10 cm and weighing only 4 kg, features an Android-based smartphone. The phone’s accelerometers and GPS receivers will form the heart of the satellite’s guidance system, writes Paul Marks for New Scientist. One app, Scream in Space, which will run videos of people screaming on the phone’s display, aims to see whether vibrations from the phone’s loudspeaker can be picked up through its chassis by a microphone. Other apps will take pictures of Earth using the phone’s camera, measure variations of Earth’s magnetic field with the satellite’s onboard magnetometer, and use the phone’s screen to display telemetry data on the satellite’s progress through space. Designers hope to piggyback Strand-1 on a rocket launch sometime between January and April 2012.