These images of Earth were reconstructed from photos taken by three smartphones in orbit, or "PhoneSats." The trio of PhoneSats launched on April 21, 2013, aboard the Antares rocket from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility and ended a successful mission on April 27. The ultimate goal of the PhoneSat mission was to determine whether a consumer-grade smartphone can be used as the main flight avionics for a satellite in space.
"Run tracking and calorie counting apps can certainly be regarded among the successes of the smartphone, but without dedicated sensor hardware, the philosophy of "there's an app for that" only goes so far. A host of products now available for Android let users with a little bit of technical know-how create powerful devices previously found only in the domain of hospitals and law enforcement. One of the most successful expansion boards that allows Android devices to control external instruments and to orchestrate the collection of a variety of sensor data is the IOIO board. The system works well in wireless mode with most Bluetooth dongles, and its on-board FPGA gives 25 I/O channels, including plenty for analog input. It also handles analog output via pulse width modulation (PWM)." More at ExtremeTech
"A UK mission, jointly developed by the University of Surrey's Surrey Space Centre (SSC) and Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL), to send the world's first smartphone satellite into orbit, is due to launch on 25th February. The unique and innovative satellite, called STRaND-1 (the Surrey Training, Research and Nanosatellite Demonstrator), is a 30cm CubeSat weighing 4.3kg. It will launch into a 785km sun-synchronous orbit on ISRO's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) from Sriharikota, India. STRaND-1 will also be the first UK CubeSat to be launched and has been developed by talented space engineers and researchers at Surrey with the majority of the design and developmental work being carried out in their spare time. The build and test phase of the project has been completed in just three months." More
"Mars Images lets you browse the latest images from the Opportunity Mars Exploration Rover. Scroll through the thumbnails of the latest downlink from Mars and view any image in fullscreen mode. Send interesting images to your family and friends." iPad/iPhone | Android