After several postponements, the Austrian climate satellite PRETTY successfully lifted off from the European spaceport in Kourou (French Guiana) on Monday at 03:36 CEST. This was announced by rocket operator Arianespace and the Viennese space company Beyond Gravity Austria.
The Austrian satellite PRETTY (Passive Reflectometry and Dosimetry) was released into orbit two hours after launch at an altitude of about 550 kilometers. In the future, it will collect data on climate change, among other things, and was developed by Beyond Gravity Austria as main contractor together with the Graz University of Technology (TU) and Seibersdorf Labor GmbH for the European Space Agency ESA.
Fifth Austro satellite in space
PRETTY should now be orbiting the Earth at an altitude of about 550 kilometers at a speed of more than 25,000 kilometers per hour. The ground station in Graz will be able to communicate with the satellite five to six times a day. PRETTY is the fifth Austrian satellite in space and the third built by the Technical University of Graz.
After a ‘warm-up phase’, the mini-satellite, which consists of three assembled cubes, each with an edge length of ten centimeters, will send the first scientific data to Earth after one to two months. The institutions involved will then use it to conduct research into, for example, the height of the glacier ice on Greenland, the height of waves in the oceans or the influence of space weather on the lifespan of satellites.
Until then, the experts must determine whether the device can start working as planned. This requires, among other things, the four antennas and the two solar wings, which must be deployed automatically 45 minutes after take-off: “We will know in the coming days whether this worked perfectly,” says Andreas Dielacher of Beyond Gravity.
The rocket had several satellites on board
The rocket launched a total of two Earth observation satellites and ten ‘secondary payloads’, including the Austro satellite. The main passengers of the Vega rocket, which was originally scheduled to be launched on October 4, are Thailand’s Earth observation satellite THEOS-2 and Taiwan’s TASA space agency’s FORMOSAT-7R/TRITON satellite.
Source: Krone
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