WREN

Spacecraft nº:

Germany spacecraft nº: 71

Launch data: Designation  13066 Launch date  21 Nov 2013 - 07:10 UT Launch site  Do, LC-370/13 Launch vehicle  Dnepr Mission   Earth orbit: Perigee / Apogee   km Eccentricity   Inclination   ° Period   min

Spacecraft data:

Description:

• Wren is a crowd-funded femto-satellite by start-up company STADIKO to test miniaturized µPP-Thrusters, 3-axis control and a new image based navigation system in a satellite built to the 1U PocketQub form factor (5 cm × 5 cm × 5 cm).
• It will be equipped with a camera system in order to remotely take pictures of the earth, the sun and deep space objects. The camera will also be connected to the board computer. In this way the implemented artificial intelligence will evaluate the pictures in order to detect the earth’s nadir relative to the sun. Together with the conventional gyro- and magnetic field attitude sensors, those three components will constitute an adaptive feedback guidance system which could precisely navigate the satellite on its own into the specified orbit by using its four micro pulsed plasma thrusters (micro-PPTs). The guidance system will be the main part of our mission as this could not be investigated in a non-micro-gravitational environment.
• The flight saw the launch of the first PocketQubes, ejected from Unisat-5.
  • The 1P size are 0.15 kg 5 x 5 x 5cm cubes:
    $50Sat (Eagle-2, 50DollarSat) from Morehead State Univ.
    WREN from StaDoKo (spinoff company of the Univ. Aachen).
    Pocket-PUCP was further nested inside PUCPSat-1 and it is not clear if it has been ejected yet.
  • 2.5P PocketQubes deployed were:
    BeakerSat (Eagle-1) from Morehead State Univ.
    QubeScout-S1 from U.Maryland/Baltimore County