Images from space, taken by NASA’s Android smartphone powered satellites

NASA’s PhoneSat project officially ended about a week ago, with the three Android smartphone powered nanosatellites, named “Alexander, Graham, and Bell,” burning up in the atmosphere on April 27th, after spending two weeks in orbit.

The primary goal of the mission was to see if a consumer-grade smartphone could be used as the primary computer to control avionics for a satellite in orbit, in this case two HTC Nexus One devices and a Samsung Nexus S.

While in orbit, the satellites sent hundreds of packets of data to ground stations around the world. NASA collaborated with amateur radio operators to collect the data from space and piece together the images that were taken with the smartphone’s cameras. The images were transmitted back to earth in pieces at only 1,200bps, accounting for some of the faults in the pictures.

The collection of images above and below is the result of several years’ work, culminating in the two-week space flight, launched from NASA’s Wallops Island Flight Facility in Virginia last month. NASA wants projects like this, a student led effort, to foster further research into commercial, academic and citizen-space applications.

Click here to see the PhoneSat page, including the dashboard of amateur operators around the world

source: NASA via The Verge