TUGSAT-1, also known as BRITE-Austria and CanX-3B, is the first

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

satellite A satellite or an artificial satellite is an object, typically a spacecraft, placed into orbit around a celestial body. They have a variety of uses, including communication relay, weather forecasting, navigation ( GPS), broadcasting, scient ...

. It is an

optical astronomy Visible-light astronomy encompasses a wide variety of astronomical observation via telescopes that are sensitive in the range of visible light (optical telescopes). Visible-light astronomy is part of optical astronomy, and differs from astronomi ...

spacecraft operated by the Graz University of Technology as part of the international BRIght-star Target Explorer programme.

Details

TUGSAT-1 was manufactured by the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...

based on the Generic Nanosatellite Bus, and had a mass at launch of (plus another 7 kg for the XPOD separation system). The spacecraft is cube-shaped, with each side measuring . The satellite will be used, along with five other spacecraft, to conduct photometric observations of stars with

apparent magnitude Apparent magnitude () is a measure of the Irradiance, brightness of a star, astronomical object or other celestial objects like artificial satellites. Its value depends on its intrinsic luminosity, its distance, and any extinction (astronomy), ...

of greater than 4.0 as seen from Earth. TUGSAT-1 was one of the first two BRITE satellites to be launched, along with the Austro-Canadian UniBRITE-1 spacecraft. Four more satellites, two Canadian and two Polish, were launched at later dates.

Launch

The TUGSAT-1 spacecraft was launched through the University of Toronto's Nanosatellite Launch System programme, as part of the NLS-8 launch, along with UniBRITE-1 and AAUSAT3. The NLS-8 launch was subcontracted to the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), who placed the satellites into orbit using a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) in the PSLV-CA configuration, flying from the First Launch Pad at the

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. The NLS spacecraft were secondary payloads on the rocket, whose primary mission was to deploy the Franco-Indian SARAL ocean research satellite. Canada's

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and NEOSSat-1 spacecraft, and the United Kingdom's STRaND-1, were also carried by the same rocket under separate launch contracts. The launch took place at 12:31 UTC on 25 February 2013, and the rocket deployed all of its payloads successfully.

References

{{BRITE Spacecraft launched in 2013 Satellites of Austria Space telescopes First artificial satellites of a country 2013 in Austria Space program of Austria Graz University of Technology Spacecraft launched by PSLV rockets

Details

Launch

See also

References