Reconfiguring on the fly could be the future for space probes (Image: NASA / ESA)

THE trouble with space probes is that once they have been launched their mission cannot be changed. But a test satellite planned for 2012 could change that: its flight computer will contain electronic hardware that can be completely reconfigured in space, allowing it to switch from, say, an atmospheric pollution sensor to a near-Earth asteroid detector.

Dubbed the “flying laptop”, the spacecraft is the brainchild of Toshinori Kuwahara of the Institute of Space Systems at the University of Stuttgart, Germany, whose idea will appear …