PW-Sat 1

Spacecraft nº:

Poland spacecraft nº: 1

Launch data: Designation  38083 / 12006G Launch date  13 Feb 2012 - 10:00 UT Launch site  Ko, ELV Launch vehicle  Vega Mission  Civil: Technology Development LEO Earth orbit: Perigee / Apogee  310 x 1441 km Eccentricity  7,80E-02 Inclination  69.4 deg Period  102.1 min

LARES, ALMASAT and Cubesats being prepared for launch. Credit: ESA

Credit: ESA

Description:

• PW-Sat 1 is the first polish nanosatelite. It will deploy a solar sail as a deployable drag augmentation device in order to accelerate the removal of picosatellites at the end of their missions.
• Primary mission is to test a deployable drag device to speed re-entry.

Mission details:

• ESA's new small satellite launch vehicle, Vega, made its first flight successfully on Feb 13, 2011.
  The Vega booster took off from the Ensemble de Lancement Vega (ELV) at Kourou and headed northeast. The Zefiro 9A third stage burnt out at 1005 UTC and entered a marginal orbit (one estimate is around -30 x 775 km; another solution from the limited data available is around 50-60 km x 250-500 km). The stage probably reentered at first perigee at around 1112 UTC south of New Zealand, and has not been cataloged. The AVUM stage first burn was completed at 1008 UTC and probably reached an orbit of around 180 x 1450 km. At 1048 UTC the AVUM second burn began and resulted in a 1435 x 1452 km x 69.5 deg orbit.
• At 1106-1110 UTC AVUM's third burn lowered the perigee resulting in an orbit of around 310 x 1441 km. At 1110 UTC the three P-PODs released their cargo. Finally at 1111 UTC AlmaSat was ejected, and the AVUM vented its remaining propellant, ending up in a 272 x 1431 km x 69.5 km orbit.
• The Lares Support System, attached to the AVUM, can be considered an additional payload, as it includes extensive instrumentation to monitor the launch. It also deployed seven 1U Cubesats from three P-POD deployers:
  • P-POD 1 contained XaTcobeo, from the University of Vigo; `e-st@r' from the Politecnico di Torino; and ROBUSTA from the Universite' de Montpellier 2.
  • P-POD 2 ejected MaSat-1 from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics; Goliat from the University of Bucharest; and PW-Sat-1 from the Warsaw Inst. of Technology (Politechnika Warszawska).
  • P-POD 3 carried UNICubeSat-GG, from U. Roma La Sapienza, which has a gravity gradient experiment.