Danish students will launch their own satellite next summer

A 1U-CubeSat is 10 cm on each side and weighs 1 kg. Illustration: Space Inventor

13 March 2021 by Ole J. Knudsen

New possibilities

The launch of the first satellite has now been ordered from the company Momentus to take place next summer on a Falcon-9 rocket. The satellite will be a so-called CubeSat of 10x10x10 cm and with a mass of 1 kg. The satellite will contain a series of small experiments that the students are currently working on defining. One of the ideas is to investigate the possibility of using the same frequency as a regular wireless network, to communicate between satellites. This could allow some of the subsequent DISCO satellites to send much larger amounts of data down to Earth. The data could e.g. be images that show the development in the use of the Arctic regions as the ice around Greenland disappears.

To be used for teaching in both the universities and in the high schools

"It is quite wild that I now, as part of my studies, am sitting here developing a communications unit for a satellite that I will help launching already next year," says Aleksander Brøndum Bille, who is currently doing a bachelor's project at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Aarhus University. In his bachelor's project, Aleksander will construct a prototype of the ground stations that will be lent to Danish high schools after launch and thus give Danish high school students the opportunity to talk to the DISCO satellites.

DISCO has been developed under the Danish partnership for spacerelated educations.

CubeSat prototype. Photo: Space Inventor.

Mission patch competition

All satellite missions have a cool mission patch and so must DISCO. We are therefore giving away an Astro Pi kit for the coolest mission patch suggestion for the DISCO program. For inspiration try to google mission patch. Astro Pi is a small Raspberry Pi computer developed by The Raspberry Pi Foundation in collaboration with the European Space Agency ESA. The Astro Pi kit consists of a Raspberry Pi 3, a Sence HAT card with a number of built-in measuring instruments, a camera and a power supply. The Astro Pi Kit enables you to develop experiments as those that could be performed on a CubeSat.

Proposals for a mission patch for the DISCO program must be uploaded to the DISCO Facebook page before May 9 to enter the competition. www.facebook.com/DanishStudentCubeSatProgram

For more information:

Christoffer Karoff (AU)