The mission dubbed
“Wanderlust”, Desire to Travel,
lifted off on September 28 at 11:20 UTC on a Soyuz-2 rocket with
a Fregat upper stage. 15 commercial, governmental and scientific
satellites for Exolaunch’s customers from Europe, Canada, the
UAE and the U.S were successfully delivered into orbit.
Exolaunch provided comprehensive launch, deployment, mission
management and integration services to Kepler Communications,
Spire Global, the UAE Space Agency, Technische Universität
Berlin, Würzburg Center for Telematics, NanoAvionics and one
unnamed commercial customer. With this launch, Exolaunch has
flown 110 smallsats on multiple launch vehicles.
The company confirmed successful separation of three
microsatellites weighing within 100 kg and 12 nanosatellites
into a sun-synchronous orbit of 575 km. These smallsats have
various missions, including IoT, Earth observation, airplane
and ship tracking, radio occultation measurements, greenhouse
gas monitoring, scientific experiments and new technology
demonstration.
Wanderlust is Exolaunch’s eleventh rideshare mission in total
and seventh mission with Soyuz. Exolaunch successfully
utilized its proprietary flight-proven separation systems –
CarboNIX
the next generation shock-free separation system for
microsatellites, upgraded modifications of
EXOpod
cubesat deployers, as well as its
EXObox
sequencers to flawlessly deploy its customers’ satellites into
the target orbit.
Exolaunch’s full manifest on the Wanderlust mission includes
the following payloads:
-
2 x 6U XL Antilles and Amidala GEN1 nanosatellites from
Kepler Communications
Kepler, a developer of next-generation satellite
communications technologies. These satellites, both of
which carry a high-capacity Ku-band communications system
and a prototype IoT payload, are important instalments of
Kepler’s development and demonstration platforms. The
satellites will deliver additional capacity for Kepler’s
Global Data Service and also be a technology demonstration
platform for Kepler’s narrowband connectivity solution for
IoT devices.
-
4 x Lemur-class 3U nanosatellites from Spire Global
Spire Global runs the world’s largest private
constellation of nanosatellites making radio occultation
measurements, alongside other whole-earth observations
that serve the maritime, weather, and aviation industries.
To date, Spire has launched more than 100 satellites that
operate across a broad range of orbits. Exolaunch has
helped deploy approximately one-third of Spire’s satellite
constellation, which now also includes four of its
Lemur-class 3U satellites on today’s mission.
-
MeznSat 3U nanosatellite from the UAE Space Agency
The UAE Space Agency is pushing technological developments
in the local New Space industry through MeznSat. The
purpose of the satellite is to study and monitor
greenhouse gases, specifically CO2 and Methane, over the
UAE. MeznSat is a nanosatellite for climate observation,
manufactured by Khalifa University of Science and
Technology (KUST) in partnership with the American
University of Ras Al-Khaimah (AURAK) and funded by the UAE
Space Agency. The satellite’s primary payload will be a
shortwave infrared (SWIR) spectrometer that makes
observations in the 1000-1650 nm wavelength range to
derive atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. This is
a prominent project for the UAE Space Agency, launching
immediately after its recent HOPE mission to Mars.
-
SALSAT microsatellite from the Technische Universität
Berlin
With SALSAT, the Technische Universität Berlin aims to
analyze the global spectrum use of S-band and VHF, UHF
amateur radio bands. This analysis is required due to the
increasing number of users and the intensification of
radio communication, which is leading to an escalating
probability of interference between radio signals. It will
analyze the global spectrum usage with SALSA, a spectrum
analyzer payload based on a Software Defined Radio and
also features a variety of unique secondary payloads.
-
4 x 3U NetSat nanosatellites from the Würzburg Center for
Telematics
NetSat is composed of four 3U satellites that will pioneer
research in formation control. It is set to demonstrate
the self-organization of several satellites in
three-dimensional space to jointly optimize the
configuration for given tasks. This will then open
innovative perspectives for future sensor networks in
space, including systems for three-dimensional imaging of
the Earth’s surface and computer tomography methods for
looking inside clouds.
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Lacuna Space nanosatellite built by NanoAvionics
The payload, developed and built by Lacuna Space, consists
of an IoT Space Gateway, able to receive and share data
from small, battery powered sensors even in remote areas
on the ground or at sea with little or no connectivity.
The payload was integrated into NanoAvionics’ M3P
nanosatellite bus. The mission has been part-funded and
supported by the UK Space Agency and ESA.
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2 microsatellites within 100 kg for Earth Observation for
Exolaunch’s unnamed European-based commercial customer.
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