This new toy is frankly, cool. It is a miniature satellite that is only 10 cm across and you can have it launched up into orbit for your own use. These little toys where designed simply, very small and carry a minute ham radio transmitter which allows people to control the miniature spaceship and, according to New Scientist, "experience the life and death of a real space flight project.". They are still very expensive though at $30,000 (this is cheap in the terms of space technology) which is, to put it in perspective, the cost of 60 iPhone 5's or two years fees at a good school. I find this new technology, a bit unappealing though. I don't think anyone would want to buy one because of the price, even though it's quite cheap in space technology terms. Something they didn't mention in the New Scientist article, is the problem of space junk. That is all of the broken and dead satellites that have stopped working, leftover stages of rockets and even, tools that astronauts have dropped from the ISS (International Space Station) etc. For example a million dollar tool set that was let go of by an astronaut and is now floating around somewhere around the planet. NASA is trying all kinds of programs to clear this stuff up because it can be hazardous to space shuttles, destroying the protective tiles that are necessary for reentering the Earths atmosphere and causing the craft to explode. If space junk can do that to a space shuttle, then what do you think it would be able to do to some tiny little satellite floating around harmlessly. It would probably just shatter into a hundred pieces But the worst thing about space junk is NASA is pretending, to the public, that it isn't even there.New Scientist
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