The chip at the core of the Sprite
microsatellite is smaller than a dime.

What’s the News: Imagine a cloud of tiny satellites, each no larger than a postage stamp, sailing like dust on solar winds through a planet’s atmosphere and sending radio signals home, with no need for fuel. When a small patch of real estate opened up on an International Space Station experiment, researchers jumped at the chance to test the durability of such tiny “satellites on a chip,” which they hope to eventually deploy in atmospheres like Saturn’s, and three of the miniature objects are being delivered to the Space Station by Endeavor on its final flight (which was just scrubbed for today). They will allow researchers to see how well such microsatellites hold up to radiation and other rigors of space.

How the Heck:

The mini-satellites, developed by Cornell University and Sandia National Laboratories and called “Sprites,” are intended to take data about chemistry, radiation, and other properties—they could even be used to detect whether a planet’s atmosphere has any chemical signatures of possible life, such as nitrogen.
Instead of using fuel, the tiny printed squares of silicon would rely on physical ...