The European Space Agency (ESA) will launch its new Ariane 6 rocket on Tuesday, which will make its maiden flight carrying a Portuguese nanosatellite built by students and professors from the Instituto Superior Tecnica (IST).
The launch from the European space base in Kourou, French Guiana, is scheduled for between 19:00 and 23:00 (Lisbon time).
The Santa Maria teleport in the Azores, operated by Thales Edisoft Portugal, will be the first station to provide data from the rocket, Lusa said, “facilitating communications during a critical phase of the mission.”
According to Thales Edisoft Portugal, the first launch of Ariane 6 “marks the return of European operational capabilities for access to space.”
The rocket will carry ISTSat-1, the first nanosatellite developed by a Portuguese university institution.
ISTSat-1 will be used to test a new decoder for messages sent by aircraft that will allow them to be detected in remote areas, and to evaluate the feasibility of using nanosatellites to obtain aircraft status signals such as speed and altitude for air safety purposes.
“The Técnico team will receive information from the satellite at the ground station in the Oeiras hub and check, by comparing the data received with reference data, whether the satellite performs the expected functions and has the expected characteristics,” IST explained in previous clarifications in Luso.
ISTSat-1 will be located 580 kilometers from Earth, above the International Space Station, the astronauts’ home and laboratory, and will send back its first data about a month after operations begin.
The nanosatellite, which costs around 270,000 euros, will remain in orbit for five to 15 years before re-entering the atmosphere.
“This is a great interdisciplinary project that will help train good engineers,” said IST Professor Rui Rocha of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, who coordinated the work.
Along with ISTSat-1, other satellites and scientific equipment from foreign institutes, companies and space agencies will be sent.
Ariane 6, which made its maiden flight four years later and cost €4.5 billion, will succeed Ariane 5, which made its final flight in July 2023.
ESA, of which Portugal has been a member since 2000, plans a second launch, this time commercial, of a new line of European rockets by the end of the year. Fourteen flights are planned over the next two years.
It is with this rocket that ESA intends to send the Plato space probe in 2026, which will “photograph” thousands of stars and search for planets similar to Earth. The Portuguese scientific team of the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences is participating in the mission.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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