This man built his own satellite to “take selfies with Earth” from space

If you’ve ever dreamed of taking a selfie from space, former NASA engineer turned YouTuber Mark Rober is working on a new project that could make that dream a reality. Rober has built his own satellite, called SAT GUS, equipped with the hardware needed to take selfies from space.

Google is one of the partners supporting the SAT GUS project, and the satellite actually has a Pixel phone glued inside a radiation-resistant shell. In fact, the Pixel isn't designed to be used purely for taking selfies, but instead to serve as a high-resolution display that shows the image in front of the camera.

You can participate in the project through the Space Selfie website and take a selfie. The process involves uploading an image that is then sent to the SAT GUS satellite. The camera hardware on the satellite will take a photo of you with the Earth as a “background” and send it back to you.

The SAT GUS satellite will be launched into space on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Station in California (USA). According to the plan, the satellite is expected to be carried aboard the Transport 12 spacecraft in January 2025, and will start taking selfies in space after a few months of deployment in low Earth orbit about 600km above our blue planet.

You can submit any original photo for your selfie, as long as it fits the guidelines and you have permission to share it. It can be a photo of yourself, a group photo, or a photo with a pet.

The Space Selfie program is currently being marketed as “free,” but it will require an invite code. Some T-Mobile customers will be able to get the free code through the T-Life app on December 3. Select Google Pixel customers will also be eligible to receive the code via invite, according to the website (you can follow updates on the @teampixel Instagram account).

SAT GUS can take around 1,000 photos a day, and the limited slots will be handled on a first-come, first-served basis. The satellite has two fixed solar panels that power a pair of 120-watt batteries. Rober notes that SAT GUS also has another camera and a Pixel phone set up to ensure that the selfie project doesn’t get derailed if something goes wrong with the main camera.