Editorial: space state Estonia

Photo: Euroopa kosmoseagentuur

An Estonian students’ satellite is on its way into orbit! Enthusiasts viewed the satellite’s launch via live broadcast from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Spaceport in Kourouru, French Guiana.

For sceptics, talk of small Estonia becoming a space state may sound like an eager overstatement. However, reading about the last five years’ work and getting a feel for the opportunities and applications of nanosatellites in the future, one has to admit it’s a respectable initiative.

The students’ satellite project was born five years ago. Its chief driver, vice-dean for academic affairs in the faculty of science and technology at University of Tartu Mart Noorma, has never tired of repeating that building a satellite is only a means, not the goal. A means for the university to produce young people with enough initiative and creativity to become movers and shakers in society, no matter what the field. That’s the educational side of the project. But education might as well produce immediate tangible results, too.

How did we arrive at the project?

Upon Estonia signing a cooperation contract with ESA, Postimees noted in its editorial of September 23rd 2010 that as a consumer, Estonia in the space business anyway. From daily weather forecasts, navigational positioning systems, television and other forms of communication to planning of military operation, space technology plays a role. Whether she knows it or not, any village grandmother is already a space technology consumer!

Any business has two sides: if something is consumed, then someone else is creating and producing it. So why not have those Estonians not frightened by the words, “space technology”, offer something to the world in the production side, too?

Mart Noorma’s initiative and steadfastness laid a strong foundation for just such people. Launching a packet of devices the size of a milk carton into orbit may not offer the drama of great discoveries of new lands. It doesn’t replicate Mr Gagarin’s space trip or Neil Armstrong’s first words on the Moon. Yet the venture’s human qualities and motivations are still the same.

The Estonian students’ satellite uses a sun sail invented by the Finnish scientist Pekka Janhunen. If it really works, one day people will use the technology to fly to faraway planets.

It would be wonderful to think of Estonia as Gadgetville – a land of the willing, the wise and the steadfast. For those dreaming of such an Estonia, the satellite makers provide hope.