Takeoff of Estonia's first ever satellite postponed due to weather

Photo: SCANPIX

 High-altitude winds over the spaceport in French Guiana have resulted in a decision by Arianespace and the European Space Agency (ESA) to postpone the takeoff of the Vega rocket with three satellite payloads, including the first ever Estonian satellite ESTCube-1, from the scheduled time point of 5:06 a.m. Saturday Estonian time.

Another launch date for the rocket, VV02, will be decided depending on the evolution of the weather conditions over the Guiana Space Center in Kourou.

The VV02 vehicle and its three spacecraft passengers – Proba-V, VNREDSat-1 and ESTCube-1 – remain in a safe, standby mode at the spaceport's launch site, Arianespace said on its website.

Silver Latt, head of the ESTCube-1 delegation at the spaceport, said the decision to put off the takeoff was made half an hour before the scheduled takeoff time and the start of the mission was adjourned for at least two days.

The rest of the members of the Estonian team received the news at the ESTCube-1 mission control center at Tartu Observatory. "You can't beat nature. Technically, this postponement doesn't mean anything bad for the ESTCube-1 mission and hopefully the students will cope with this extra emotional pressure too," said Mart Noorma, the researcher overseeing the student project. He advised everyone interested in the project to stay updated via www.facebook.com/estcube.

ESTCube-1 was built in Estonia by students from the University of Tartu, the Estonian Aviation Academy, Tallinn University of Technology and University of Life Sciences. The satellite's payload has been developed in conjunction with the Finnish Meteorological Institute and the German Space Center (DLR). As Estonia's first satellite, the project will also be used to build Estonian infrastructure for future space projects and to educate space engineers.

The student satellite has been described as extraordinary in terms of its scientific mission, as in collaboration with Finnish and German partners a novel electric solar wind sail, invented by Pekka Janhunen, researcher at the Finnish Meteorological Institute, will be tested. The electric sail is a new space propulsion concept which uses the solar wind momentum for producing thrust, and is seen as enabling in the future both interplanetary flights as well as removal of space litter.

The satellite is a cubesat measuring 10 to 10 to 10 centimeters and weighing 1.05 kilograms, and its mission control is situated at Tartu Observatory at Toravere, near Tartu.

According to the mission timetable, the satellite would start up and begin preliminary system checks to determine the integrity of its hardware 5 minutes after deployment. Thirty minutes after deployment the radio antennas will be deployed and communications with the Earth will be made possible, while 40 minutes after deployment the satellite's radio beacon will be activated and the first messages will be sent back to Earth.

The satellite's beacon will be held active for a couple of days to determine satellite's health. The ground station will communicate with the satellite for diagnostics and possible software updates. Then the satellite's rotation will be stabilized and first images of  the Earth will be taken.

The main mission will start when the coils within the satellite will be used to spin it up and the tether deployment starts.

Of the two other satellites to be put into orbit by VV02, the Proba-V is a 160-kilogram European Space Agency spacecraft, designed to map land cover and vegetation growth across the Earth every two days, while VNREDSat-1 is a 120-kilogram optical satellite for Vietnam, designed to support the country's creation of an infrastructure to enable better studies of climate change effects, improving predictions for natural disasters and optimizing natural resource management.