Considering that NASA’s been whining about not having enough budget for the last couple years, it really makes them look bad to discover what a couple kids from MIT did the other day.

While NASA’s assembling teams have needed millions of dollars to launch one satellite, two guys from MIT put together a satellite of their own and launched it into low Earth orbit.  Here’s how they did it:

First, they took a styrofoam beer cooler and filled it with chemical hand warmers (to keep the thing from freezing in space), a cheap camera, and a prepaid phone with GPS so they could find the thing when it was all over.  They then inflated a weather balloon with helium and launched their “satellite”.  It got so far up that it managed to take a picture of the curvature of the earth.

Talk about your fantastic homemade gadgets–kudos to two schmoes from MIT for making NASA look like a bunch of whiny embezzlers.

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Although we’ll never see these in the US, at least in this exact format, it’s still an interesting proposition.  Panasonic’s DMR-BS850 and DMR-BS750 are Blu-ray writers, yes writer (or burner) with a dual digital satellite TV tuner compatible with the UK’s Freesat service.  Inside each machine is a hard drive (500GB and 250GB respectively) and a USB and SD card port for watching or writing home recorded HD/SD files to a Blu-ray disc.  Although Panasonic hasn’t made mention of price, speculation puts the the S850 at £1000, but expect more details to emerge when they launch this June.

In light of my crippled Time Warner box, I highly doubt we’ll see anything like this in the US, but you never know.

[Pocket-lint]

It’s definitely not pretty, but like your mother and teachers said: don’t judge a book by it’s cover. The Iridium satellite phone, which I believe is largely owned my Motorola, is your barebones, white knuckle explorer, work any where phone. They’ve ditched the thrills of today’s handsets and managed a 99% connection rate. That means if your stranded at the peak of mount ‘wherever the f’ you are’, you can manage a call to get your frozen ass air lifted to safety. The 9555 boast a 27% reduction in weight over it’s predecessor (9505A) and rocks speakerphone, a brighter screen, SMS and email support.

I don’t know price, but I’m sure it ain’t cheap.

[Electronista]