PoSAT-1, the first

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Port ...

satellite A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioiso ...

, was launched into

orbit In celestial mechanics, an orbit is the curved trajectory of an object such as the trajectory of a planet around a star, or of a natural satellite around a planet, or of an artificial satellite around an object or position in space such a ...

on 26 September 1993, on the 59th flight of the Ariane 40

launch vehicle A launch vehicle or carrier rocket is a rocket designed to carry a payload (spacecraft or satellites) from the Earth's surface to outer space. Most launch vehicles operate from a launch pads, supported by a launch control center and syste ...

. The launch took place in the

Centre Spatial Guyanais The Guiana Space Centre (french: links=no, Centre spatial guyanais; CSG), also called Europe's Spaceport, is a European spaceport to the northwest of Kourou in French Guiana, a region of France in South America. Kourou is located approximatel ...

French Guiana French Guiana ( or ; french: link=no, Guyane ; gcr, label=French Guianese Creole, Lagwiyann ) is an overseas departments and regions of France, overseas department/region and single territorial collectivity of France on the northern Atlantic ...

. About 20 minutes and 35 seconds after launch, at an altitude of 807 km, PoSAT-1 separated itself from the launch vehicle. The PoSAT-1 weighs about 50 kg and belongs to the class of

microsatellites A microsatellite is a tract of repetitive DNA in which certain DNA motifs (ranging in length from one to six or more base pairs) are repeated, typically 5–50 times. Microsatellites occur at thousands of locations within an organism's genome. ...

, which are between 10 and 100 kg. The entire project was developed by a consortium of universities and companies in

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, In recognized minority languages of Portugal: :* mwl, República Pertuesa is a country located on the Iberian Peninsula, in Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Macaronesian ...

and was built at the

University of Surrey The University of Surrey is a public research university in Guildford, Surrey, England. The university received its royal charter in 1966, along with a number of other institutions following recommendations in the Robbins Report. The institu ...

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

. The total cost was around €5 million, about €3 million paid by the Portuguese Government and €2 million by the Portuguese companies involved (Po-SAT consortium:

Instituto Nacional de Engenharia, Tecnologia e Inovação The Instituto Nacional de Engenharia, Tecnologia e Inovação (National Institute of Engineering, Technology and Innovation), usually known as INETI for short, was a state-run R&D institution in Lisbon, Portugal, with scientific and technologic ...

(INETI),

EFACEC EFACEC Power Solutions SGPS, S.A. is a Portuguese energy, engineering and mobility company, comprising several subsidiaries in different international markets. Efacec group is one of the largest manufacturers in the fast-charging infrastructure ...

, ALCATEL,

Marconi Company The Marconi Company was a British telecommunications and engineering company that did business under that name from 1963 to 1987. Its roots were in the Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company founded by Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi in 1897 ...

OGMA OGMA – Indústria Aeronáutica de Portugal S.A. is a Portuguese aerospace company focused on aircraft maintenance and manufacturing. History OGMA was founded as part of the reorganisation of the Portuguese Army's Aeronautic Service on June ...

Instituto Superior Técnico Instituto Superior Técnico MHSE • MHIP (IST, also known colloquially as Técnico, and stylized TÉCNICO LISBOA) is a public school of engineering and technology, part of University of Lisbon. It was founded as an autonomous school in 1911 ...

(IST),

University of Beira Interior The University of Beira Interior (UBI; Portuguese: ) is a public university located in the city of Covilhã, Portugal. It was created in 1979, and has about 6,879 students distributed across a multiplicity of graduation courses, awarding all ...

(UBI) and CEDINTEC). The responsible for the project was Fernando Carvalho Rodrigues, known as the father of the first Portuguese satellite.

Mission

The mission was called Flight 59, which launched several satellites: PoSAT-1 from Portugal,

Eyesat-1 Eyesat-1 is an American experimental communications microsatellite with an store-dump payload. The mission of Eyesat-1 was experimental monitoring of mobile industrial equipment. Eyesat-1 has provided the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administr ...

and ItamSat from

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

, KITSAT-2 from

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...

, HealthSat-2 (an international medical satellite) and Stella and SPOT-3 from

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan ar ...

, the latter one a large satellite for Earth imaging photography.

Spacecraft

The PoSAT-1 is a box of

aluminum Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. It h ...

, in the form of a

parallelepiped In geometry, a parallelepiped is a three-dimensional figure formed by six parallelograms (the term '' rhomboid'' is also sometimes used with this meaning). By analogy, it relates to a parallelogram just as a cube relates to a square. In Euclid ...

, 58 cm long, 35 cm wide, 35 cm depth and weighs 50 kg. Over a first drawer that contains the batteries and the remote detection module are stacked 10 other drawers full of electronic cards. At the top of the satellite there are sensors for attitude and the stabilization mast, essential tools for PoSAT-1 to maintain correct orbit. Four

solar panels A solar cell panel, solar electric panel, photo-voltaic (PV) module, PV panel or solar panel is an assembly of photovoltaic solar cells mounted in a (usually rectangular) frame, and a neatly organised collection of PV panels is called a phot ...

are mounted on the lateral sides of the structure of the satellite, forming a parallelepiped, which are the source of

energy In physics, energy (from Ancient Greek: ἐνέργεια, ''enérgeia'', “activity”) is the quantitative property that is transferred to a body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of work and in the form of hea ...

for all on-board systems. Each panel contains 1344 cells of Gallium arsenide (GaAs).

Numbers

* Speed: 7.3 km per second. * Orbit: 822 x 800 km, inclination of 98.6°,

Sun-synchronous orbit A Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO), also called a heliosynchronous orbit, is a nearly polar orbit around a planet, in which the satellite passes over any given point of the planet's surface at the same local mean solar time. More technically, it ...

, lasts 101 minutes, revolves around the

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surf ...

around 14 times per day.

End of mission

The re-entry of the PoSAT-1 is expected to be 2043. PoSAT-1 stopped transmitting information to Earth in 2006.

External links

Real time satellite tracking - PoSAT-1

{{Orbital launches in 1993 Space program of Portugal Satellites orbiting Earth Portuguese inventions First artificial satellites of a country Spacecraft launched in 1993 Amateur radio satellites Derelict satellites orbiting Earth