The CubeCat-4, a new nanosatellite, is already orbiting the Earth

The CubeCat-4 nanosatellite, developed by the UPC’s NanoSat Lab, is one among seven payloads which have traveled on the Ariane 6 maiden flight, which took off on the night time of 9 to 10 July from French Guiana.

CubeCat-4 is the one Catalan instrument and one among two from Spain on board this ESA mission. Developed by college students, the nanosatellite focuses on observing the Earth, learning climate and climatic phenomena from space, and finding and monitoring vessels to forestall accidents. Some college students had been current on the launch web site.

CubeCat-4 is the fifth nanosatellite created by the NanoSat Lab of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya—BarcelonaTech (UPC). This laboratory is linked to the Barcelona College of Telecommunications Engineering (ETSETB), the place an Superior Engineering Mission course is taught.

CubeCat-4 is a one-unit CubeSat-type nanosatellite and It was chosen to be launched aboard the rocket together with a satellite from Galicia and different payloads from Germany, Slovakia, France and Portugal. This choice adopted ESA’s announcement of alternative, which supplied a launch to low Earth orbit for experiments as much as a total mass of 80 kg and launch of payloads with a mixed mass of as much as 800 kg.

The nanosatellite will measure climate and climatic phenomena from space utilizing a GPS and Galileo navigation sign reflectometer (GNSS-R) and a microwave radiometer developed by college students and can observe the Earth to watch ice and soil moisture. Additionally, it’ll find and monitor vessels to forestall accidents and to check interferences within the frequency range used.

All this can be achieved with experimental know-how totally designed on the UPC and a brand new deployable antenna. As soon as in orbit, the antenna will carry out a number of the measurements required: radiometric knowledge and knowledge geared toward mitigating radio frequency interferences utilizing a GPS and the GNSS-R instrument.

Seven years of labor by greater than 90 college students

The nanosatellite is a part of the European Area Company’s (ESA) Fly Your Satellite tv for pc! program, which supplies university students the chance to design, construct and launch their very own satellites into orbit.

Designing, constructing and testing CubeCat-4 has concerned greater than 90 bachelor’s diploma, grasp’s diploma and doctoral diploma college students from a number of disciplines over seven years. Three of those college students not too long ago visited the Kourou spaceport to carry out the ultimate checks: the definitive integration of the EXOpod Nova module (inside which CubeCat-4 was prepared for launch) with Ariane 6.

Again in March, part of the crew traveled to Berlin, Germany, to finish the earlier integration of CubeCat-4 with the EXOpod Nova module.

Two members of the crew had been current on the launch web site of Ariane 6 in French Guiana: Luis Contreras—a programs engineer, a pupil on the UPC’s doctoral diploma in Aerospace Science and Know-how, and crew chief—and Júlia Alós—a grasp’s pupil in Telecommunications Engineering on the ETSETB.

CubeCat-4 is a part of the CubeCat sequence of small satellites and payloads which have flown or will fly into space with missions developed totally by college students and school on the NanoSat Lab.