Tel Aviv University on Sunday announced plans to launch a nanosatellite into orbit, saying it would be the first of its kind to be built solely by the university.
According to a press release by the university, the TAU-SAT1 nanosatellite is roughly the size of a shoebox and it is currently undergoing pre-flight testing at the Japanese space agency JAXA, prior to a planned launch by NASA in early 2021.
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Dr. Ofer Amrani, head of Tel Aviv University's minisatellite lab said that the project was entirely devised, developed, assembled, and tested at Tel Aviv University's Nanosatellite Center, an interdisciplinary endeavor of the University's Iby and Aladar Fleischman Faculty of Engineering, Raymond & Beverly Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences, and Porter School of Environmental Studies.
"TAU-SAT1 is the first nanosatellite designed, built and tested in an Israeli university, and the entire process, from conception through design, software development and testing, was done at TAU," he said.
The device was designed as a research satellite and will conduct several experiments while in orbit, including the measurement of cosmic radiation in space.
Dr. Meir Ariel, director of the TAU's Nanosatellite Center, noted, "We know that that there are high-energy particles moving through space that originate from cosmic radiation. Our scientific task is to monitor this radiation and to measure the flux of these particles and their products. To this end, we incorporated a number of experiments into the satellite, which was developed by the Space Environment Department at the Soreq Nuclear Research Center."
One challenge was to extract the data collected by the TAU-SAT1 satellite, as it is designed to complete an orbit around the Earth every 90 minutes.
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"In order to collect data, we built a satellite station on the roof of the engineering building," Amrani explained. "Our station, which also serves as an amateur radio station, includes a number of antennas and an automated control system. When TAU-SAT1 passes over Israel, the antennas will track the satellite's orbit and a process of data transmission will occur between the satellite and the station."
The satellite is expected to be active for several months. Because it has no engine, its trajectory will fade over time as the result of atmospheric drag. It will eventually burn up in the atmosphere and return to the Earth as dust.
JNS.org contributed to this report.
