In our local free weekly paper (of all places), there is a story about the long saga of CHIPSat: Mark Hurwitz's "Cosmic Hot Interstellar Plasma Spectrometer Spacecraft." I'd never heard about it before, but I apologize if it's old news to most you.

The most gripping thing about it is, even after NASA approval, how HARD it is for researchers to get something small-scale launched into orbit:

"Good-bye Mr. CHIPS
After years of struggle, Mark Hurwitz beat the odds and launched this humble satellite. So why did the folks at NASA eventually make him pull the plug?"

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/PrintFriendly?oid=780923


(According to the story)
1. Signed up on a Russian rocket. Uh, no, government researchers can't use foreign launders.
2. Catch a ride on the Shuttle. Oops, shuttle's orbit is too low.
3. Delta ride found. Did I say equatorial orbit? Guess what? We're polar now...
...and so on.

The most heartbreaking thing is what happened when they finally got into space. (No, no instruments failed.)

Great article, thanks.

I actually attended the Critical Design Review for CHIPSat, which was built here in San Diego by a team at SpaceDev. The mission was an excellent example of doing something real on a small budget. The fact that no one thinks you can fly a real mission for less than hundreds of millions of dollars is a depressing aspect of how spaceflight has evolved in the past decade or so. One can hope that the pendulum will swing back eventually.

Yup, it's a great shame that the UNEX program was canned. Perhaps cheaper access to space (I gather NanoSail-D and Presat are getting a ride on SpaceX's Falcon 1) will cause NASA to reconsider a UNEX-like program.

Quick geek factoid: CHIPSat was the first satellite to use TCP/IP for communication with Earth.