ChipSats Designed to Flutter in Solar Wind

“Three prototype Cornell-developed, fingernail-sized satellites — collecting the solar wind’s chemistry, radiation and particle-impact data — will be mounted on the International Space Station after the space shuttle Endeavour delivers them on its final flight, which is scheduled to launch at 3:47 p.m. EDT on Friday, April 29. The thin, 1-inch-square chips, named “Sprite,” in development for three years in the lab of Mason Peck, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, will be mounted to the Materials International Space Station Experiment (MISSE-8) pallet. The pallet will be attached to the space station, exposing the chips to the harsh conditions of space to see how they hold up and transmit data.” More