Satellites To Try Formation Flying on ISS

SoySauc writes "From a story on the New Scientist site: 'A soccer-ball-sized satellite will soon be floating aboard the International Space Station. Once joined by two others, it will help researchers test formation flying and autonomous rendezvous and docking maneuvers for future orbiting satellites.' NASA's DART mission was designed to do the same thing, but in 2005 shut itself down and bumped into the satellite it was only meant to approach."

Re:The Real Purpose...

[Anonymous Coward]

its about the telescopes: http://www.spacedaily.com/news/ngst-99e.html [spacedaily.com]

Russians do it better

[Guillermito2]

Curiously, and despite a lot of success in many domains, NASA never fully mastered automated orbital rendez-vous, which is almost routine for USSR and then Russia space agencies, since almost 30 years (and is very important for keeping the International Space Station fridges and tanks full). Here [space.com] for example we can read :

"The Soviet Union performed the first automated rendezvous in 1967 and since then, Russia has used fully automated systems to dock Soyuz and Progress spacecraft to its space stations."

Re:Why CO2 instead of O2?

[FooAtWFU]

Probably because carbon dioxide compresses very well (which is why you see it in soft drinks and compressed C02 cartridges in the terrestrial world). Also, oxygen is dangerously flammable.

Re:Why CO2 instead of O2?

[bjheu]

More accurately... They maintain a fairly delicate balance of O2 to Nitrogen, They've done that ever since the Apollo Flash Fire. Also they have scrubbers to remove CO2 therefore it really is the least intrusive gas to work with.

Otherscales

[DrYak]

Although it needs much larger scale of formation (formation with miles between elements). Extremly precise formations of satelite, can be used to do Interferometry [wikipedia.org] to try to detect Gravitational radiation [wikipedia.org].
LISA [wikipedia.org] is such an exemple. (but it's Solar sattelite, following the same orbit as the earth and keeping constant formation.)

...that... or having the "??AA" trying to enforce non skipable Ads.
And every "\/1@gr/\" seller of the planet trying to buy ad space on them.