We were interested in making a telescope that
anybody could download and and build themselves. So
obviously one of the things that we wanted to do was make it
3d-printable. So the idea was we'd use one
screw and an allen key. and then you could literally just get the parts and then
construct it. The whole thing can be built for about two hundred pounds.
So the idea is to really make the costs as low as possible.
My name is James Parr. I'm the founder the open space agency
The open space agencies dedicated to citizen science,
DIY engineering, the do it yourself
mentality and the belief that everyday folks can
have their own space programme. We were increasingly interested in how
consumer and off-the-shelf technologies were starting to approach the level of
pro technologies ten years ago so the camera on
NASA's Mars rover is essentially the same quality
as a modern smartphone. The fact that consumer technology is
now evolving so quickly made me wonder whether
it was possible to do and replicate the achievements of
the space program using off-the-shelf technology. And so do that we
decided to build the Ultrascope. Something was really low cost
robotic, digital, had the ability to
look at objects from multiple locations and combine those
observations in a way that was meaningful and had scientific validity.
As well as being a 3d-printed scope it's also robot and
any robot has to have brains. So this is the brain of it which is a
Arduino Mega and then we have our own shield which basically runs the
motors and the drivers, and the Bluetooth controller
and this just slots together like that. Then that slots onto the front of the scope
So we've got the the camera basically of the phone
which is how we take images the night sky
and then the images that are taken on the phone are then sent over 4G
to the cloud. Then we can see what we're looking at here on our cloud app.
And of course when we have hundreds if not thousands of of these scopes around the world
then you will say I wonder what the skies are going to be like in South Africa say
and you'll be able to dial up that scope and see what that scope's seeing.
So I really love this time of the evening because you can really start to see the shadow of the earth rising
So it means we're not too far away from seeing some stars
Which just means it's time to reveal the mirror
So this is the primary mirror.
When we get some objects to look, at the light will come in here
bounce off the primary mirror. Bounce up here
to the secondary mirror bounces the light
into the CCD of the smart phone.
So when we started out the open space agency felt
a bit like an art project or something you know. It seemed so outlandish
that it was possible to have your own space agency.
Originally, the big rockets were the things things that
governments could only do, and then business came along we're seeing that now.
We're now in the domain of personal space or citizen space.
I think the open space agency has a part to play
it really does. As we become a space-faring civilization
this so much work to do and I'd love for OSA
to be there when we go to Mars. It might be that it has a NASA logo on the side of the spaceship
but you know for some of the experiments to be OSA experiments or
perhaps some of the technology that the astronauts use in their space suits
it might not be branded but
it'll be there and we'll know as a bunch of geeks that
we helped get there