Arianespace's new Vega C rocket will carry two Montpellier cubesats

24° in the air, 25% humidity: in the clean room of the University Space Center, the smallest parameter is monitored, in order to protect the precious little cubes clad in electronics handled by Amaury Laurand and Benoît Heintz. The engineers, this Thursday in January, took the next two space travelers from Montpellier out of their sarcophagus to check the proper functioning of the communication module of each one. Takeoff is approaching. Ten years after placing its first nanosatellite in orbit, twenty after the intuition of its director, Laurent Dusseau, that there were “objects that were not very expensive and easy to launch” whose success was certain, the Montpellier University Space Center (CSUM) is about to experience a year like never before.

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.

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.