Between October and December 2019, we have tested 'digital trading card' (NFT) by minting a prototype version of NANOSAT, The First Nanosatellites Crypto Collection, using the very first version of Mintbase –that is no longer available.
In total, there are only 59 units minted of 11 diferent cards. Next ... the collection.
You can acquire these rare NFT's at marketplace
Humanity is in an existencial crisis that threatens life on the spaceship Earth. We are in urgent need of awareness and transformational tools for survival and conservation of life in our planet; nanosatellites, the world’s smallest and cheapest operational spacecrafts ever built, are one of them. Now society rely on satellites, from many aspects of everyday life to global economy, monitoring vital signs and fostering knowledge, technologies and all type of human activities. A new and disrupting space exploration and economies are emerging at a fast pace. Outer space is no longer the exclusive territory of governmental agencies or very big corporations. Commercial off-the-shelf products are the raw material of a myriad of nanosatellites: CubeSat, TubeSat, PocketQube, ThinSat, SpaceBees, Smartphone satellites, Chip spacecrafts... even conceived as Personal Satellites! With a size of a bread loaf, a slice or even a mail stamp, are launched as a "secondary payload" or increasingly with rockets for smallsats, planes with suborbital shuttle or air launched rocket or even balloon with rocket, from new infrastructure as the SpacePorts in Earth and in orbit… History in the making!
The Orbiting Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio (OSCAR 1) is world first amateur, civilian, private, non-government spacecraft. It was built in garages of project team members, using for the most part “components off the self.” Without counting donations of materials, the total cost of the satellite, that replicated the functionality of Sputnik 1, was $64 (or today $529). It was world's first piggyback satellite, the first to be ejected as a “secondary payload.” It was used as ballast, in place of the weights necessary for balancing the payload in the rocket stage.
Launch date: December 12, 1961
Satellite Catalog No: NORAD ID 214
Int'l Designator: COSPAR 1961-034B
Aplication: Amateur Radio
Configuration:
Tags: Space Nanosatellite HamRadio COTS
Recognized as a key piece of the New Space revolution, this tiny spacecrafts have revolutionized the Space Age, opening the democratization of space access, and challenging the traditional ways of space exploration. Created in 1999 by Bob Twiggs and Jordi Puig-Suari, CubeSat open-source standard is acclaimed today as the biggest thing in satellites since Sputnik! CubeSat spacecraft is a 10 cm cube with a mass of up to 1.33 kg, scalable from one to several units ("one unit" or "1U", 2U, 3U…) The first mission was a multiple launch of 6 CubeSats using a Rokot-KM rocket, a remake of the old SS-19 Stiletto soviet intercontinental ballistic missile. The CubeSats were: AAU-Cubesat Aalborg University Cubesat (DK), CanX 1 Canadian Advanced Nanospace eXperiments (CA), CUTE 1 CUbical Tokyo institute of technology Engineering satellite (JP), DTUSat Danmarks Tekniske Universitet Satellite (DK), QuakeSat (USA) and XI-IV (JP). One of them, the CubeSat XI-IV (Sai Four), the OSCAR 57, is still active. The name "XI" (X-factor Investigator) derives from its cubic shape (XI means domino in Japanese).
Launch date: June 30, 2003
Satellite Catalog No: NORAD ID 27848 (OSCAR 57)
Int'l Designator: COSPAR 2003-031J
Aplication: Technology, Amateur radio
Configuration: 1U
Tags: Space Nanosatellite CubeSat OpenSource COTS
The “Open Source Satellite Initiative” ( OSSI 1) was a 7 years do-it-yourself cubesat project by the artist and radio amateur Song Hojun DS1SBO. “I & Universe: So far, almost all space programs were led by goverment or military. And very little were initiated by amateur group like AMSAT. Individual fantasies were used and fostered by institutions. It's time to have a private connection between you and universe. Open Source satellite Initiative shows a way to do it.”
Launch date: April 19, 2013
Satellite Catalog No: NORAD ID 39131
Int'l Designator: COSPAR 2013-015B
Aplication: Art, Amateur Radio
Configuration: 1U
Tags: Space Nanosatellite CubeSat COTS DIY Art
PhoneSat was a NASA project started in 2009. Three PhoneSats, nicknamed Alexander, Graham and Bell after the inventor of the telephone, were delivered to Earth orbit to demonstrate the feasibility of an extremely low-cost satellite bus with consumer electronics. Graham and Bell were PhoneSats 1.0 (Nexus One HTC smartphone as the onboard computer running the Android 2.3.3 operating system and a StenSat radio operating at 437.425 MHz) that took 100 pictures and transmitted data on accelerometer sensors, battery levels, magnetometer sensors, and temperatures. Bell, with an Iridium transceiver mounted, also send signals via an Iridium satellite link. Alexander was a PhoneSat 2.0 (Nexus S Samsung smartphone, running the Android 2.3.3 operating system and a StenSat radio operating at 437.425 MHz) that added a two-way S-band radio to command the satellite from Earth, solar panels for longer-duration missions, a GPS receiver and devices to control the satellite's orientation in space. Shortly before was launched in orbit STRaND-1 but the smartphone on board could not be used before satellite unexpectedly turned off in March 2013.
Launch date: April 21, 2013
Satellite Catalog No: NORAD ID 39142/4/6
Int'l Designator: COSPAR 2013-016A/E/B
Aplication: Amateur Radio
Configuration: 3 1U
Tags: Space Nanosatellite CubeSat COTS Smartphone
A crowd-funded project with the mission to provide affordable space exploration for everyone. The first open platform allowing the general public to design and run their own space-based applications, games and experiments, and steer the onboard cameras to take pictures on-demand. ArduSat was equipped with 25 sensors on board, including a camera, magnetometer, spectrometer and Geiger counter. It also had a number of Arduino Microprocessors onboard, which allowed users to upload their own application, game or experiment and run it on the satellite. A virtual mission control center in the participants web browser controled Ardusat.
Launch date: November 19, 2013
Satellite Catalog No: NORAD ID 39412
Int'l Designator: COSPAR 1998-067DA
Aplication: Experiments, Amateur Radio
Configuration: 1U
Tags: Space Nanosatellite CubeSat Arduino OpenSource
The Flock 1 fleet of 28 cubesats was the largest swarm or constellation of Earth-imaging satellites ever launched; renewed and enlarged periodically. Flock constellation, "the killer app for CubeSats", allow to image the entire Earth every day “and make global change visible, accessible, and actionable.” This cubesats (named Doves) feature mostly COTS (Commercial-off-the-Shelf) components, including their imagers.
Launch date: April 21, 2013
Satellite Catalog No: NORAD ID 39514 et al.
Int'l Designator: COSPAR 1998-067DJ
Aplication: Imaging
Configuration: 3U Constellation
Tags: Space Nanosatellite CubeSat Constellation COTS Imaging
Professor Bob Twiggs (co-creator of CubeSats) demonstrated again that very low cost satellites, made from commercial electronics, are viable in low Earth orbit. Their new PocketQube proposal in 2009 (50 mm cube and a mass of 250 grams) was a solution to increasing costs of CubeSats launches. Eagle 2 ($50Sat or MO 76) was launched together with the also PocketQubes Eagle1, QBScout and WREN, and deployed from UniSat 5 satellite.
Launch date: November 21, 2013
Satellite Catalog No: NORAD ID 39436
Int'l Designator: COSPAR 2013-066W
Aplication: Amateur Radio
Configuration: 1.5U PocketQube
Tags: Space Nanosatellite PocketQube COTS HamRadio
This popular crowdfounded CubeSat had 2,711 backers. SkyCube “is about changing space exploration from something reserved for governments, corporations, and billionaires into an arena that is affordable and accessible by everyone. It's about inspiring a new generation to take risks and accept challenges. It's about acting collectively, sharing risks and expenses, to achieve something together that none of us could have accomplished alone.” Their mission was to tweet messages submitted by its backers, to take pictures of places they have requested and de-orbits cleanly. But their signals only were received twice; the solar panels were not deployed.
Launch date: January 9, 2014
Satellite Catalog No: NORAD ID 39567
Int'l Designator: COSPAR 1998-067EL
Aplication: Technology, Amateur Radio, Imaging
Configuration: 1U
Tags: Space Nanosatellite CubeSat Education
KickSat cubesat mission was to deploy over 100 Sprite spacecrafts (or ChipSats), with the size of a postage stamp. The space flight at its simplest! But a radiation induced reset of the timer postponed the deployment to a time after the reentry date of Kicksat-1 so the Sprites were not deployed in time, and burned up inside the mothership. One of the first crowdfunded space projects, lead by Zac Manchester and continues under the NASA's CubeSat Launch Initiative. The KickSat Sprite was proposed in 2016 as an early-stage prototype of the StarChip, the interstellar probe for the Breakthrough Starshot project. Mission 2 in March 2019 success was a historic milestone in the miniaturization of satellite technology. “This is like the PC revolution for space. KickSat has kick-started the democratic space age.”
Launch date: April 18, 2014
Satellite Catalog No: NORAD ID 39685
Int'l Designator: COSPAR 2014-022F
Aplication: Amateur Radio
Configuration: 3U
Tags: Space Nanosatellite CubeSat Sprites ChipSat HamRadio
Lemur 1, for Earth-observation in the visible band and in infrared, was the prototype for a constellation of more than 50 Lemur 2 CubeSats. The constellation of over 60 CubeSats, the largest general purpose cubesat constellation, is devoted to weather forecast and to track ship and airplanes traffic. The Lemurs (Low Earth Multi-Use Receiver) by Spire Global are equiped with GPS radio occultation (for Earth atmosphere monitoring), maritime AIS (Automated Identification System) and aviation ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast) payloads. Launching and replacing satellites often consistently increases the capability and services of the constellation.
Launch date: June 19, 2014
Satellite Catalog No: NORAD ID 40044
Int'l Designator: COSPAR 2014-033AL
Aplication: Amateur Radio
Configuration: 3U
Tags: Space Nanosatellite CubeSat Constellation Metereology Tracking