Cell phones will soon make a giant leap for mankind--right into outer space. In the coming year, British engineers from Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) plan to send a cell phone into orbit to test whether cell phones are tough enough to withstand outer space, and whether they're powerful enough to control satellites. As the BBC reports:
"Modern smartphones are pretty amazing," said SSTL project manager Shaun Kenyon.... "They come now with processors that can go up to 1GHz, and they have loads of flash memory.... We're not taking it apart; we're not gutting it; we're not taking out the printed circuit boards and re-soldering them into our satellite - we're flying it as is," Mr Kenyon explained.
The jury's still out as to what cell phone model will be the world's first orbital smartphone--but the scientists have already decided to pick one that uses Google's Android operating system. That ...
