Apparently resistance of the Pi truly is futile. Running SpaceX rockets next?
CREDIT: USU GASPACS CubeSat Team
The latest Pi in space is part of the NASAbacked GASPACS project, short for Get Away Special Passive Attitude Control Satellite. Designed by undergraduate students at Utah State University, it’s a tech demonstration of an inflatable boom that doubles as a passive attitude stabilisation device, making use of aerodynamic drag available in low Earth orbit.
It takes the shape of a CubeSat that’s 10cm square, and was transported on the SpaceX CRS-24 at the end of 2021 to the ISS where it was launched from the NanoRacks CubeSat Deployer. It’s believed to be the first satellite to use a Pi Zero as the flight computer. It’s packing a Pi camera and 80 per cent of its code is Python.