It took a couple of modifications but the cleanroom has achieved operational status. In order to qualify, we need to have less than 352,000 particles larger than 0.5 microns. We also must have less than 2,930 particles larger than 5 microns. Those numbers are per...
Fifty years ago, I was recovering from staying up late to watch Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin perform their EVA on the Moon. It was amazing to watch on our new 25 inch color television, even if the images coming from the Moon were in black and white. The world...
My friend Joel Jackel came down from new York with his Mark Watney costume. It took him a year to make it. We found a good location to take some shots and then with a little bit of editing, made it look like Mars. It was a fun photo shoot. Going to send this image on...
One of the tenants we have here at Mini-Cubes is one that we have followed for years. Make space available to everyone. Sometimes that means we get to launch something really incredible. We will be launching a copy of Svetoslav Alexandrov’s book, I, Virtual Astronaut....
This morning Blue Origin successfully flew their 11th space mission. The spacecraft zoomed to over 346,000 feet in a picture perfect launch. It was incredible to watch. For Mini-Cubes this has been a good day. One of the experiments onboard proved out some design...
Recently, I spent half a day with Dick Wanner, a reporter for the Ephrata Review. The article finally appeared in the paper and I couldn’t be happier with the result. It was a fun interview. I loved showing off where we are and what we plan to do. You can check out...
During the development process, we have to design and test a lot of parts. When they reach gold status, they are ready for production. Three parts from our PocketQube, Discovery, have reached this status. For these parts, there will be no further changes. The next...
In order to test the Discovery PocketQube, we needed to build a launch pod. This device holds the Discovery and other PocketQubes in place for launch. Once the pod is in orbit, the door is commanded to open and the PocketQubes are released. These pods are for testing...
This week we managed to get the system's camera to see light for the first time. This took a bit more work than anticipated as the serial interface we are using would not play nice with Putty. After troubleshooting for a couple of evenings, we found that it was easier...