Jonathan McDowellAnother data drop: satellite mass distribution 1957-2009 and 2010-2017 showing the rise of the nanosats https://mastodon.cloud/media/zehN0EhHknF6I9HNV2o https://mastodon.cloud/media/eshnHEoaD0_U6-is7yo
Juha Makkonen@planet4589 Indeed. We are about to join the club. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aalto-1
@juhamac Yes indeed! You are in OA-7 dispenser D7 I believe. Been doing the data entry for my satellite catalog in advance... good luck!
@planet4589 Thanks. Aalto-2 seems to have been in Cygnus / Atlas 5 at Cape two weeks ago but the launch got bumped to 18 April. Aalto-1 is in India for PSLV launch.
@juhamac Ahh right, I did know that. I should read my own notes more carefully! Two ready to go at once, super exciting, go Finland!
@planet4589 Yes. Should be start of something new and exciting. Not too long ago I read about some opportunity during the cold war era. Finland could've had an astronaut or rather cosmonaut for big bucks but we've really never been for vanity projects. It would've sucked the aerospace budget dry. Though some still wondered whether that would've boosted general interest in the field. At least we did really fall in love with Tim Kopra who has some ancestry here.
@planet4589 The article is here: https://suomenkuvalehti.fi/share/939337/021f90 It's quite readable with Google Translate if you want to take a peek.
@planet4589 Actually rather terrible translation, but peeking works. :rolling_eyes:
@planet4589 Some of the related fields are really interesting too. Like this guy whose biography I read some years ago. Ended up writing a massive wikipedia article about him. https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/V._A._Heiskanen I guess I should've also done more to the english wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veikko_Aleksanteri_Heiskanen Too bad that mere hobbyists like me write most of these. They always seem slightly off, esp. the mathematics. But maybe they are a start.
@juhamac I love that there is a category of 'Finnish geodesists'.
@planet4589 It's probably this guy and everyone he hauled in from home during those years at OSU. Small circles are kind of evident when I read from that finnish wikipedia. Met her future wife at Vilho Vaisala's home (you probably know his namesake company), who was sister of Vaisala's wife.
@juhamac I didn't know of the company but I know of his father the asteroid and comet discoverer.
@planet4589 Ok. They do a ton of space instruments so I though it might be familiar. Here's some past projects: http://www.vaisala.com/Vaisala%20Documents/Vaisala%20News%20Articles/VN198/VN198-2016%208-10%20To%20Mars%20and%20Beyond%20-%20a%20History%20of%20Vaisala%20in%20space.pdf