From creating remote-sensing CubeSats to analyzing aerogel: how the public is hacking into open source space exploration.

Speaker: Ariel Waldman

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Contributed notes

(Add your notes here!) Ariel waldman digital anthropologist

1969 man on thE moon, first arpanet message

500 people have been in space, a few more have been on the Internet

"If you can't open it, you don't own it." Maker's bill of rights

The Harvard Computers were a grooup of women hired by an astronomer who came up with the star classification system.

What distinguishes a professional from an amateur?

Elevator 2010: trying to make a space elevator by the end of 2010

Modes of invading space: 1. Robots.   Google lunar x prize.  Building a lunar exploration robot

Team frednet is an open source team that needs help from everyone

Open Luna Foundation has a similar goal but is not a competition.  

2. Galaxies Galaxy Zoo is a web interface where you can study space images and classify galaxies and possibly discover something new.  You can fave galaxies.  "no data monkeys". You get credit for anything you find.  Built by six volunteers.  "Green peas"  galaxies were discovered by Galaxy Zoo users

Moon Zoo has 60 million images from LRO

Precursors: SETI@home was cool but had no human interaction.  Stardust @home had 700,000 images of comet dust.  Had more human interaction.

3. Satellites and small spacecraft

Tubesat kit.  Interorbital will give you parts and launch for $8000 including launch.  2 to six month decaying orbit

Sedsat-2 is a university based program

Spaceduino $150 : styrofoam box for weather balloon payload.  Good first step to get used to conditions

4. Open source Cool tools for visualizations

World wind by NASA

Celestia is another

Astrotagging: astrometry.net will tag photos 

Makes amateur data searchable and interoperable with pro photos 

More info on this and more at spacehack.org

Ariel@arielwaldman.org