We’ve seen Kickstarter campaigns to put a single satellite into space and one to launch your own personalized postage-stamp sized satellite into low earth orbit. This time, though, you can break the bonds of earth and send your own Arduino compatible satellite on a collision course with the moon. The project is called Pocket Spacecraft, and exactly as its name implies, it allows you to send a small, flat, 8 cm diameter spacecraft to the surface of the moon.
The pocket spacecraft are made of metallized kapton, a very thin membrane stretched inside a loop of wire. On board this paper-thin spacecraft are a pair of solar cells and a bare die MSP430 microcontroller connected to a suite of sensors. before launch, you can program your tiny space probe with commands to relay data back to Earth, either helpful scientific data or a easy tweet.
These pocket spacecraft will be launched from a cubesat – a highly successful line of amateur spacecraft that are typically launched by hitching a ride with larger commercial satellites. To get from low earth orbit to the moon is much harder than just hitchhiking, so the cubesat mothership comes equipped with either a solar sail or its own engine that electrolysed water into hydrogen and oxygen, the ideal rocket fuel.
Pocket Spacecraft is an amazingly outstanding feat; there are literally dozens of amateur-built spacecraft orbiting above our heads best now, but so far none have ventured much more than a few hundred miles away from their home planet. getting to the moon with an amateur spacecraft is an remarkable accomplishment, and certainly worthy of the $300 price tag.