The flight is scheduled for May, with the University Space Center hoping for a very prosperous year.
The first launch of Vega C
“If all goes well, we should have four to five launches”, slips the Hérault professor, that the Covid-19 like “the shortage of basic components, of what we use in practical work with our students”, made them wary and patient. Three years moreover that no cubesat out of these labs took “the air”, but this time we are there. On the Kourou launch pad, in mid-May, will stand Vega C, the European Space Agency’s new rocket, manufactured by the Italian Avio, operated by Arianespace, for which this will be the qualification flight. The first, then. And at the very top, near the “big” satellite, MTcube-2 and Celesta, little “guys” 10 cm square.
Two ephemeral lives
“We will deliver them in mid-April, integrated into a deployer, a square tube equipped with a spring and a door. We put them in and when the main satellite is released, the door opens and the spring expels them.” Mastering these aspects is an additional skill and source of income for the CSUM. In this case, MTcube-2 and Celesta will be released at 6,000 km from Earth, ten times farther than the ordinary altitude of nanosats and in a “deadly” zone where the “radiations are intense and where no one goes”, precisely the reason for this choice. “They go there to take measurements, to study this poorly known environment”, describes Laurent Dusseau. Even if their life will not exceed two months…, will not leave them any chance of “crossing” the other cubesats of the CSUM to be launched in 2022 – Enso, which will study the ionosphere vertically from Antarctica for the space agency South African, and Hydrosat -, nor the “big” Robusta-3A Méditerranée.
A nanosatellite for Djibouti
Every year, the CSUM trains around fifty students who rally the space industry and receive trainees within the framework of partnerships. One of these was signed with Djibouti, to design and launch the small East African country’s first satellite, and train technicians and engineers from its space agency. Hydrosat is the result of this collaboration, whose mission will be to monitor local water resources. A similar partnership has just been signed with Senegal.
Called to participate in the understanding of Cevennes meteorological phenomena, this one will take the center to a new course. Three times more imposing, i.e. 30 cm by 10, it incorporates, like one of the giants sailing in geostationary orbit, attitude control (piloting) and an engine from the French company Thrustme, a masterpiece of miniaturization.
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