Gadgets

Google’s Nexus One phone is going where few smartphones have gone before. A group strapped the Nexus One to the back of a rocket and launched it from the Nevada desert into the atmosphere to test the device’s performance up in the air. The Mavericks Civilian Space Foundation , a group of rocket enthusiasts, used an Intimidator-5 rocket to send the device 28,000 feet into the atmosphere. “The purpose of flying the Nexus One is to find a low-cost satellite solution,” says Thomas Atchison, chairman of the Mavericks Foundation. “The radio, processing power, sensors and cameras in smartphones potentially have the same capability as those in satellites.” The idea is to drive down satellite cost by using off-the-shelf products and components, says Atchison. “Today’s satellites are the size of Greyhound buses,” he says. “But I believe they are going to get smaller and more frequently deployed. This is a first-step effort.” The Nexus One piggybacked on a rocket that’s being used as part of a project called Clotho that’s trying to find out how far off the earth’s surface life exists. The test flight with the Nexus One was to see how the device behaves under a high-G environment, says Atchison. “If you put a Nexus One in orbit, how will it perform?” he says. “How does the device handle the thermal temperature and vibrations. We wanted to see the results.” The resulting video from the Nexus One is below. As expected, the video is a lot of shaking, blue sky and blobs of light, but it is still fun to watch. An earlier test brought Nexus One back with a shattered screen but the device did well on its second flight. James Dougherty, one of the participants in the project, shows the payload with a biosampling module and the Google phone. See Also: Extreme Hobbyists Put Satellites Into Orbit With $8000 Kits … The $150 Edge-of-Space Camera: MIT Students Beat NASA On Beer … DIY Freaks Flock to ‘Hacker Spaces’ Worldwide Water-Cooled Supercomputer Doubles as Dorm Space Heater Photo: The shattered Nexus One post launch ( jurvetson/Flickr ) [via Make and Droid Ninja ]

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Nexus One Phone Rides a Rocket Up 28,000 Feet