Tue, Jun 24, 2014
Sputnix Spacecraft Boosted Into Orbit June 20th
The first Russian private Earth remote sensing satellite of the Sputnix Company, named TabletSat-Aurora, was boosted into orbit on June 20th by ISC Kosmotras, part of a cluster of small spacecraft deployed after launching atop an RS-20 rocket.
The microsatellite in intended to beam data to the Scanex UniScan ground network for use in commercial, scientific, educational and environmental projects.
"It is an important event for us," said Alexander Serkin, ISC Kosmotras CEO, "For 20 years we have been working with globally famous companies - spacecraft developers, the majority of them are private ones. And today we have an opportunity to participate in the implementation of a private space project in Russia. We are certainly proud to be a part of this event."
After its ascent to orbit, subsystems developed by the company will be tested. The first signal from TabletSat-Aurora has already been received. The spacecraft has a minimum designed life expectancy of 1 year, and is equipped with a high accuracy tri-axial orientation and stabilization system and an optical camera for Earth imaging from space, with a resolution of 15m (approx. 50 feet) per pixel.
"The company consider TabletSat-Aurora as a universal platform for placement of scientific and commercial applications payloads," said Stanislav Karpenko, Sputnix CTO.
The satellite platform and the majority of systems and equipment were developed by the company, with financial support from the Skolkovo and ISC Kosmotras. In 2012, Sputnix, a daughter company of Scanex, moved its operations to Skolkovo and received a grant from the Skolkovo space cluster. It took 8 months to develop and prepare a microsatellite for the launch. "We plan to create a cluster of small spacecraft and ultrahigh detail imaging satellites," said Andrey Potapov, Sputnix CEO.
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