Launching from Baikonur in Russia, the Soyuz-2 rocket
successfully launched on the 14th July at 6:36 UTC. The primary
payload for this mission was the Roscosmos’ Kanopus-V-IK Earth
observation satellite. Making up the auxiliary payload were 73
smallsats in total, a record-breaking number of satellites for a
single launch. It was the most technically challenging mission
in the history of smallsat commercial launches, with the upper
stage deploying the satellites into three different
sun-synchronous orbits: with the primary payload being deployed
into 515 km, the first batch of smallsats - into 580 km and the
rest of cubesats -into 485 km.
This launch became an important milestone for Exolaunch as it
was our largest cluster launch at the time. On this mission,
Exolaunch procured launch capacity and delivered mission
services and deployment solutions for 15 cubesats and 2
microsats for international customers. We are proud of how large
and diverse the rideshare that made up the auxiliary payloads on
this mission was.
Another significant milestone for Exolaunch on this mission
was the EXOpod cubesat
deployers and
EXObox sequencer being
flown for the first time and receiving successful flight
heritage.
Exolaunch acquired its first and successful experience of
accommodating microsatellites on a rocket and adapting them to
launch vehicle’s interfaces.
Flying Laptop was a
microsatellite developed at the Space Institute in the
University of Stuttgart. It
was the first microsatellite on Exolaunch’s manifest and had a
mass of 120 kg. The primary objective of Flying Laptop was to
demonstrate and qualify new small satellite technologies. This
included using a MICS (Multispectral Imaging Camera System)
for various scientific Earth observation experiments. A
further mission goal of Flying Laptop was to utilize its star
trackers for NEO (Near Earth Objects) detection.
The second microsatellite on Exolaunch’s manifest was
developed at the
Technical University of Berlin. TechnoSat,
is a microsatellite mission with a mass of 20 kg. Its primary
objective was to provide an on-orbit demonstration capability
for novel technologies including a new type of position
actuator for small satellites called a Fluid Dynamic Actuator
(FDA). This technology is based on angular momentum storage
using liquid metal and it was tested in space for the first
time.
Making up part of Exolaunch’s manifest were multiple
international cubesats:
The Lemur-2 cubesats produced
by Spire Global, a data and
analytics company based in San Francisco. Spire’s satellite
constellation of Lemur-2 3U cubesats provides global ship
tracking and weather monitoring. The Lemur-2 satellites' two
main payloads are the STRATOS GPS radio occultation payload
and the SENSE AIS-receiver.
Named CICERO, 6U cubesats were
launched as part of a constellation developed by
GeoOptics. These LEO cubesats
are built for the purpose of performing GPS and Galileo radio
occultation (GNSS-RO) of Earth's atmosphere and surface remote
sensing by GNSS reflection. The primary goal of this system is
to provide critical data on the current state of the Earth.
The NanoACE 3U cubesat was a
technology demonstrator validating the Endeavor suite
technologies produced by
Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems.
NanoACE was launched for the purpose of internal Tyvak
development as an attitude control experiment and for
validating technologies which would be used for future
missions.
Ecuador Technological University’s UTE-UESOR
1U cubesat was jointly developed by the Ecuadorian Universidad
Tecnológica Equinoccial (UTE) and the Russian Southwest State
University (SWSU).