A pair of smallsats built by Rocket Lab for a NASA mission to Mars have arrived in Florida for a launch this fall on the inaugural flight of New Glenn.
    • threelonmusketeersMEnglish
      2•4 months ago

      Each of the twin spacecraft — called Blue and Gold after the colors of the University of California Berkeley, which will run the mission — weighs 524 kilograms

      These days, anything under ~1 tonne or so is considered “small”. Spacecraft like the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Psyche were each over 2 tonnes at launch, and some geostationary communications satellites can be upwards of 10 tonnes and the size of a school bus.

      • @[email protected]M
        1•4 months ago

        I was thinking a cubesat was a small satellite 😃. I guess thats micro or something.

        I guess I’ve never considered how big the satellites were until seeing that picture next to the people.

        I guess with the square-cube law, one 10 times as heavy might only be twice as tall.

          • @[email protected]M
            2•4 months ago

            This is going to sound weird given my surprise, but JWST seems smaller than I expected! I definitely expected the mirror array to be like 10 or 20 people tall or more, not 3.

            To be fair, I also didn’t expect Hubble’s mirror to be not much bigger than a person.

            All the ground based telescopes throw off my expectations.

            Edit: Actually, I think it’s the radio telescopes throwing off my expectations