Guayaquil Space Society| Orbital Sky
Orbital Sky
StudentSat
Summary
"StudentSat" was born as an idea that seeks accelerators that support technological initiatives to improve education in times of virtuality and eliminate social differences linked to this resource. It is based on the use of data stored in CubeSats placed in orbit to meet the demand for access to information of students from terrestrial areas where the internet does not reach maximum coverage. With this, sufficient coverage and access to a database will be granted to places with little access to these media in the region. With the lower costs of these spatial tools, potential solutions would be given to the problems of the fourth industrial revolution linked to equal access to information.
How We Addressed This Challenge
We developed “StudentSat” as a start-up that supports the Guayaquil Space Society association in its initiative to create a space port in Ecuador, since thanks to it we could apply our idea as a potential solver to the current connection problems of internet for students. It is based on the use of CubeSats (small satellites of low earth orbit) that with their data collected, a free information bank would be made for students who improve the demand for quality internet in our country and those of the region for schools, colleges and universities. By making a network of these nanosatellites that orbit the planet, sufficient coverage can be granted to certain sectors where previously there was no access to this virtual resource. We want to take advantage of the access to space in recent times, with important factors such as the change in technology that allows the costs of space infrastructure to fall and thus face the challenges offered by the fourth industrial generation.
Additionally, with our start-up we want to take advantage of the boost that the governments of North America and Europe are giving to entrepreneurs with effective solutions to current problems. The digital world requires that there be a greater presence in space to transmit all the presence of data and communication and that is a great advantage to be able to facilitate the presence of our enterprise in the space market that is being created.
How We Developed This Project
It all started with the stress of a third world city hit by the coronavirus. In the month of April of this year 2020, we lost close lives and hope in our authorities to ensure collective security. The time to return to classes was approaching and the uncertainty of how they were going to be dictated in the midst of a mandatory distance forced us to live a context that we had never experienced before. Despite all the losses we had, resilience forced us to cope with impotence and it was time to return to study classrooms, which we decided to do under a context of virtuality through the internet. The different faces of several problems that indifference hid before this pandemic emerged: the difficulties of many children and adolescents who did not have the necessary technology coverage in the area where they lived, therefore, limiting their use of the internet. We were also not unaware of this problem, since despite being in an area where there was coverage, it fell over and over again, even generating a lot of psychological anxiety. Somehow we had to help ourselves and by doing so, others as well, since this problem was not only of our small country, but of the entire region.
The approach we wanted to give is to CONFRONT social inequality, since this problem that affected a large part of the cities of an entire country, certain cities (such as capitals where the internet connection is more agile) did not go through the same .
Our project is based on the use of CubeSats, small cube-shaped satellites measuring 10 centimeters and weighing 1 kilogram, with solar panels and deployable antennas that make them even more versatile. The cost to build one? Typically less than $ 50,000. And much more money would be saved if they are launched from our country in the South Pacific region. CubeSats are carried into space in a Polypico-Satellite Orbital Deployer or P-POD for short. The standard P-POD holds 3 Cubesats and will fit almost any rocket as a secondary payload. More than 100 Cubesats have been launched into space since they were first introduced by CalPoly and Stanford in 1999. To reduce space debris, they are generally placed in low orbits and returned to Earth in a few weeks or months.
Another point that helped us was the geographical position of Ecuador, since it is privileged for launching rockets and with the new sights on a space port that could carry these cubesats and even more so for the telecommunications issue at the regional level, additionally You can use the situation to promote it, not only as an idea that helps only one city, but many places in the region that are experiencing the same problem.
To present our idea in an audiovisual format we use the Blender software. The improvement in data that we could store with the CubeSats was interesting, compared to the data obtained in tools from times past their invention.
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
We use data from CORONA Satellite Photography, the oldest dataset that contains satellite images of the earth's surface, in order to improve the quality of the content on our cubesats.
With the historical knowledge about the superficial change of the earth that can be accessed, we were able to fulfill the objective of providing resources to students, to develop unlimited investigations, thus achieving an impact on the astronomical cultural richness and promoting it. In fact, cultural astronomy is also an interdisciplinary area that studies the conceptions, perceptions and practices regarding the celestial of the various human groups, present and past, understood as social products that are an integral part of each culture.
In a broad sense, very old antecedents of interest in the diversity of ideas about heaven of different human groups can be traced. However, thinking specifically about the conformation of an academic field, we tend to resolve the lack of information in contents that are related to the concern for the possible astronomical connotations of large structures of especially European antiquity, the interest that arose in the context of the cultural anthropology and the history of astronomy.
Project Demo
Data & Resources
CORONA Satellite Photography