The Vega rocket lifted off at 1000 GMT (5 a.m. EST) from the Guiana Space Center, a South American facility that sits where the Amazon jungle meets the Atlantic Ocean. This is the first launch for the new European launch vehicle. Seven CubeSats were successfully deployed via 3 P-PODs
- Xatcobeo (a collaboration of the University of Vigo and INTA, Spain): a mission to demonstrate software-defined radio and solar panel deployment;
- Robusta (University of Montpellier 2, France): a mission to test and evaluate radiation effects (low dose rate) on bipolar transistor electronic components;
- e-st@r (Politecnico di Torino, Italy): demonstration of an active 3-axis attitude determination and control system including an inertial measurement unit;
- Goliat (University of Bucharest, Romania): imaging of Earth using a digital camera and in-situ measurement of radiation dose and micrometeoroid flux;
- PW-Sat (Warsaw University of Technology, Poland): a mission to test a deployable atmospheric drag augmentation device for de-orbiting CubeSats;
- MaSat-1 (Budapest University of Technology and Economics): a mission to demonstrate various spacecraft avionics, including a power conditioning system, transceiver and onboard data handling;
- UniCubeSat GG (University of Rome La Sapienza, Italy):a mission to study the gravity gradient.
Read more at http://spaceflightnow.com/vega/vv01/120213launch/
Links to all of the individual CubeSat home pages can be found at http://www.uk.amsat.org/4180
We would also like to congratulate those behind the first satellites ever for Romania, Hungary, and Poland! http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMWHLWX7YG_index_0.html
