Mission full for ESA’s OPS-SAT flying laboratory

Launched on 18 December 2019, OPS-SAT was tasked with opening up the world of spacecraft operations to the widest doable viewers. Its founding precept was to supply a quick, no-charge, non-bureaucratic experiment service for European and Canadian trade and academia.

It introduced experimenters from firms, universities and public establishments throughout Europe and past into coronary heart of ESA’s ESOC mission management centre and helped them show that their new concepts had been as much as the problem of flying in orbit.

Flying ESA’s most succesful and versatile onboard laptop, OPS-SAT confirmed us what future satellites can be able to as they start to hold extra superior tools.

An in-orbit laboratory open to all

OPS-SAT was the primary absolutely ESA-owned and operated CubeSat. A small, low-cost, revolutionary and open mission was uncommon for ESA mission management, which generally flies Europe’s largest and most complicated spacecraft round Earth and throughout the Photo voltaic System.

Throughout OPS-SAT’s 4 and a half years in orbit, the mission went from power to power, permitting 134 groups from 26 completely different nations to execute over 284 completely different experiments.

“Many experiments constructed on prime of each other, and so the satellite tv for pc grew to become much more succesful as time went on,” says David Evans, OPS-SAT House Lab Supervisor at ESA. “OPS-SAT was a analysis lab: improvements and enhancements made by one experiment might typically be harnessed by others. If one group labored out a greater approach to function the spacecraft’s digicam, the subsequent might use that to enhance their new synthetic intelligence algorithm for picture processing, for instance.”

OPS-SAT was the primary satellite tv for pc open to make use of by the general public. It hosted experiments on AI and interplanetary web and examined new software program, a few of which is now already in use by a lot bigger missions. It was the primary to conduct a inventory market commerce in orbit; the primary to show that CubeSats can present life-saving help throughout search and rescue actions; the primary to show an lively cybersecurity assault in orbit, and way more.

In 2023, the mission obtained worldwide recognition when the OPS-SAT group shared the SpaceOps Excellent Achievement award with the group behind NASA JPL’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter.

Working experiments to the very finish

OPS-SAT was impacted by the current unexpectedly robust enhance in photo voltaic exercise that started in early 2024. The ensuing enhance to the drag skilled by the satellite tv for pc prompted it to start an early descent into the ambiance.

Groups from ESA and the organisations operating the ultimate experiments on OPS-SAT fought arduous to take care of communication with the spacecraft as rising drag threatened to steal away management at any second. They worked night and day to wrap up the mission’s final activities, doing their best possible to squeeze out the ultimate drops of science and expertise return.

The College of Oxford, UK, the College of Stuttgart, Germany, and others successfully completed experiments in the mission’s final few days, with Hellenic Aerospace Business (HAI) completing the mission’s final experiment simply 24 hours earlier than contact with the satellite tv for pc was misplaced for good.

“Because the satellite tv for pc descended by way of the ambiance, it grew to become a lot tougher to manage. The OPS-SAT Mission Management Crew and the groups from our experimenters all labored lengthy hours to shut out as most of the remaining experiments as doable earlier than the top,” says Evans.

“I used to be significantly glad to see us full the experiment from Protostar Labs. It concerned the in-flight reconfiguration of the on-board Subject Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA), which is generally thought to be a high-risk process that may take months. Nonetheless, they pulled it off inside just some days and with simply 48 hours left on the mission clock!”

“It was additionally an ideal instance of an OPS-SAT experiment. OPS-SAT is all about reducing boundaries and offering entry to house for brand new entities. Protostar Labs are a NewSpace firm from Croatia – a nation with a younger house trade – and are precisely the sort of group that OPS-SAT was developed to help.”

As a CubeSat with a measurement and a mass akin to a bit of plane carry-on baggage, there have been no dangers related to OPS-SAT’s atmospheric reentry and deplete. However the reentry itself provided a uncommon probability to assemble useful information.

We’ve little or no details about what precisely occurs to spacecraft as they fly by way of the decrease ranges of Earth’s ambiance. Understanding how a satellite tv for pc behaves throughout its last moments is vital for bettering how we mannequin and make sure the security of atmospheric reentries.

With the support of the global radio amateur community, the OPS-SAT group was capable of collect and course of telemetry from receivers all all over the world. These information at the moment are being analysed, however already promise to supply fascinating new insights.

“Throughout the last contact with the satellite tv for pc because it flew over Australia, we had been shocked to see little or no inner heating. It should have gone from regular temperatures to deplete within the last jiffy. The impression on the satellite tv for pc’s angle was extra dramatic. Because the drag elevated, the satellite tv for pc began spinning like a prime about one axis however then re-stabilised itself. How and why this occurred is one thing we should look into.”

The tip is barely the start

Throughout the mission, because the variety of experimenters elevated, the group at ESOC started to spend the vast majority of their time offering what grew to become the OPS-SAT House Lab service, which included offering help to the experimenters, performing dry runs on the bottom, and naturally guaranteeing the secure execution of the experiments in house.

Along with opening up the expertise of ESA mission management to the broader world, OPS-SAT additionally opened mission management as much as the agility, innovation and new concepts of college and trade groups. The idea proved so profitable for all concerned that ‘OPS-SAT’ will now give its title to a household of future missions which have all agreed observe the rules of the OPS-SAT House Lab experiment service.

The OPS-SAT idea has been adopted by the ESA ARTES ScyLight Strategic Programme Line for a mission devoted to testing new optical and quantum communication applied sciences, referred to as OPS-SAT VOLT. It was designed with in-flight experimentation in thoughts and 50% of the mission’s time can be allotted to experiments coordinated by the OPS-SAT House Lab. The UK House Company have invested 13 million euros in VOLT, and Craft Prospect will serve as the project’s prime contractor.

Different proposed missions embody OPS-SAT ORIOLE, a joint Hungarian-Estonian proposal to ARTES Scylight, and CYBERCUBE, a cybersecurity demonstration mission managed by the ESA Safety Workplace, that may enable OPS-SAT House Lab experimentation as soon as the precept goals of the mission have been achieved.

The OPS-SAT House Lab service will proceed to supply an vital and mutually useful bridge between ESA, trade and universities throughout Europe and past, for a few years to return.