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One may think that participation with the International Space
Station would be restricted to an exclusive club of high ranking
officials and agencies. In reality, students, teachers and
commercial companies have also been taking advantage of the
station's unique environment for years. One of those
commercial companies, Houston-based Odyssey Space
Research, plans to bring the experience to the rest of us via
our mobile devices!
International Space Station National Laboratory partner
NanoRacks LLC has a collaboration with Odyssey and Apple.
This relationship enabled Odyssey to send two iPhone 4's to
the space station as part of the STS-135 mission on July 8,
2011. These phones are just like the ones you can find at the
store, but with certain alterations to meet NASA flight
certification standards. It took less than a year to make the
necessary changes and launch the devices to the station.
The iPhone 4 was selected for its mix of features, according to
Odyssey CEO Brian Rishikof.
"It had a three-axis gyro, and accelerometer, a high resolution
camera and screen, and the means to manipulate the image.
We had done some projects in the past that used all those
features, but of course it was big, dedicated equipment and
suddenly here it is in this small little package," said Rishikof.
The smartphones use the same software as their Earth
counterparts and Odyssey used standard tools to develop a
new app called SpaceLab for iOS, which will enable the
planned research aboard the station. The app is also available
for people to download to their own devices. These devices are
part of an investigation called NanoRacks Smartphone, which
looks at how the phones will operate in space. The hope is to
use the compact hardware in future research studies and to
augment crew performance and productivity in operational
activities. Currently there are four separate experiments that
will run on the smartphones via SpaceLab for iOS.
The first study is Limb Tracker, a navigation experiment using
photos of the Earth and image overlay manipulation to match
the horizon to an arc to give an estimate of altitude and off-axis
angles. Next is the Sensor Calibration or Sensor Cal
experiment, which uses reference photos and the three-axis
gyro and accelerometer for calibration to improve
measurement accuracy. The State Acquisition or State Acq
experiment also uses photos, but this time to estimate
spacecraft orbital parameters. After the first three
investigations are complete, the Lifecycle Flight Instrumentation
or LFI experiment will operate to track the impact of radiation
on the phones. To do this, the devices will monitor radiation-
induced single bit upsets, which are unintended changes in
memory location values.
One of the other goals in sending the phones to the space
station is to engage the public. The SpaceLab for iOS app for
users on the ground is identical to the software that was
downloaded onto the space devices prior to launch. According
to Rishikof, there is a setting in the application that indicates if
the equipment is in microgravity or not. The software operates
differently to accommodate the presence of gravity.
"There are 200 million devices that run the operating system
and could potentially run the application," said Rishikof. "Which
means there are 200 million users out there that could get a
sense of what it does; a sense of what an experiment in space
might look like; a sense of participation."
The investigation is planned to run on the space station in the
fall of 2011. The phones are not intended to have the same
leisure appeal as they do on Earth, however, given the lack of
iTunes, games and Internet or roaming connectivity. "People
have asked me if we were loading games on the phones for the
crew. No, we did not want them to be distracted, though
certainly it would have been fun!" said Rishikof.
Once the investigation completes, the smartphones will return
to Earth at the next opportunity. Scientists will then analyze the
stored data to better understand how the devices can be used
for future research on the space station and how the phones
react to the space environment.
Rishikof hopes to be able to share some of the space data with
SpaceLab for iOS app users, as well. "We do not have a
monopoly on good ideas and hope users will suggest new and
compelling things to add," commented Rishikof. "It is not a
game, there's no leveling or challenges, the objective is to get
data. It really just provides a way to see what's going on and
while we don’t expect tons of downloads, we do expect a lot of
interest. This would create an unusual opportunity for the
entire world to get a look at some space data and explore it on
their handheld device."
The NanoRacks Smartphone investigation is not the only
phone-related study to launch to the space station with STS-
135. The Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient,
Experimental Satellites or SPHERES, which has been aboard
station since 2006, will also use smartphones to enhance the
satellites' capabilities. While the two studies use different
hardware, the overall capabilities of these smartphones offer
bigger returns for research using a smaller package.
by Jessica Nimon
International Space Station Program Science Office
NASA's Johnson Space Center
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