by Ireland joined the space club when its first satellite was launched into low-Earth orbit, setting the stage for students of all ages across the Emerald Isle to get involved in space science.
The Irish Educational Research Satellite-1 (Eirsat-1) entered space from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at the top of SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket game on the 1st of December. About an hour and a half after launch, the tiny satellite, not much bigger than a house brick, opened up and deployed its antenna.
Eirsat-1 contacted its operators through ground stations here on World on December 2, and is performing as expected. By December 4, the controlled ground was receiving and uploading data from the tiny little one satellite.
Developed by around 50 students at University College Dublin (UCD), Eirsat-1 is still in commissioning mode but is expected to enter operational mode and begin collecting scientific data as soon as the next month.
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UCD Space Science postdoctoral researcher David Murphy, who has been involved in Eirsat-1 for six years, described the feeling of seeing the satellite go into space.
“It was really incredible. You see these launches streaming online all the time, but seeing it with your own eyes and having that investment to have a payload on the rocket,” Murphy told Space.com. “We were completely overwhelmed, and the tears definitely started to flow.”
Attend the Eirsat-1 experiments
Eirsat-1 has three main instruments. They will investigate very different things, gathering data that could help solve some of the most pressing mysteries in science as well as help future space missions.
“So it has three science payloads on board,” Murphy said. “They are the Gamma-Ray Detector (GMOD), the ENBIO thermal material experiment Module (EMOD), and then the Wave-Based Control (WBC) control algorithm.
GMOD will detect high-energy electromagnetic radiation known as gamma rays outside of interference The Earth’s Atmosphere. The data it collects could help pinpoint the sources of these powerful bursts of radiation, which are believed to be violent cosmic events such as supernova — the explosions that occur when massive stars die — and the collision of neutron stars, black holes or even a mixed compound between the two. GMOD is estimated to be on course to detect around 10 gamma ray bursts every year.
The EMOD Eirsat-1 experiment is designed to test the SolarWhite and SolarBlack thermal surface treatments, currently in use near the sun by the European Space Agency Solar Orbit mission, but in low-Earth orbit. It is thought that oxygen atoms around Earth not found where the Solar Orbiter operates could corrode the surfaces of spacecraft, so the data collected by EMOD could be crucial to developing surfaces for future spacecraft.
WBC is an experiment that uses magnetic fields generated inside a spacecraft to interact with Earth’s magnetic fields and control altitude. This technology could be adapted in the future to also control how satellites rotate, allowing spacecraft to ride magnetic waves with low power and mass with zero moving parts.
“Right now, it looks like we’ll have at least two and a half years in orbit with Eirsat-1,” Murphy said.
“That is the nominal mission, but we will use this asset as long as we have it to train students,” he said, “to enable the next generation of space scientists and engineers to have hands-on experience them on a spaceship.”
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UCD PhD student and Eirsat-1 team member Bas Stijnen told Space.com that Eirsat-1 had been deployed to a slightly lower orbit than desired, adding that this orbit would allow it to remain operational for around four years before it goes into orbit.
“The satellite was injected into an orbit that was on the low side, so the orbital lifetime is going to be quite short. We’re looking at three and a half, maybe four years before Eirsat-1 de-orbits,” Stijnen said. “We’re not going to rush, but we have to make sure we use the time we have now to conduct the science we want to do.”
As exciting as the satellite’s scientific work is, Murphy said the impact of Airstat-1 on Irish education and industry may be the satellite’s longest and most important legacy.
“Hopefully we’ve inspired the next generation of students to build the next Irish satellite and the next Irish satellite after that and shown that it can be done at a university, and that many universities can throughout Ireland to achieve this,” Murphy concluded. “I hope that this is just the beginning of continued space activities that we will have in Irish industry and education.”
