| Auto: | all |
| SwissCube-1 | |
| Mission Type: | Atmospheric Technology |
| Operator: | EPFL |
| Cospar Id: | 2009-051B |
| Satcat: | 35932 |
| Mission Duration: | 3-12 months planned (elasped) |
| Spacecraft Type: | 1U CubeSat |
| Launch Date: | UTC |
| Launch Rocket: | PSLV-CA C14 |
| Launch Site: | Satish Dhawan FLP |
| Launch Contractor: | ISRO |
| Orbit Epoch: | 24 January 2015, 04:38:10 UTC[1] |
| Orbit Reference: | Geocentric |
| Orbit Regime: | Sun-synchronous |
| Orbit Periapsis: | 710km (440miles) |
| Orbit Apoapsis: | 722km (449miles) |
| Orbit Inclination: | 98.39 degrees |
| Orbit Period: | 98.97 minutes |
| Apsis: | gee |
SwissCube-1 is a Swiss satellite operated by École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). The spacecraft is a single unit CubeSat, which was designed to conduct research into nightglow within the Earth's atmosphere, and to develop technology for future spacecraft.[2] It has also been used for amateur radio. It was the first Swiss satellite to be launched.[3]
SwissCube-1 was launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation aboard the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, serial number C14, flying in the Core Alone, or PSLV-CA, configuration.[4] The launch took place from the First Launch Pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, at 06:21 UTC on 23 September 2009.[5] SwissCube-1 was a secondary payload aboard the rocket, which deployed the Oceansat-2 satellite. Five other secondary payloads were flown aboard the rocket; BeeSat, UWE-2, ITU-pSat1, Rubin 9.1 and Rubin 9.2.[6] [7]
SwissCube-1 is operating in a Sun-synchronous orbit[8] with an apogee of, a perigee of and 98.28 degrees of inclination to the equator. It has an orbital period of 98.5 minutes.
Its mission was expected to last between three and twelve months.[6] The mission was extended an additional 18 months in February 2010 and an additional ground command facility was added.[9] It took its first picture on 18 February 2011 and its first airglow picture on 3 March 2011.[10]
On 2 December 2011, EPFL ended the SwissCube project and turned over control of the satellite to amateur radio operators.[11] SwissCube is still operational, after fourteen years in space.[12]
In anticipation of its future "debris" status in light of the slowly degrading lithium-ion batteries, the Clean Space One project was launched in 2012 to provide a spacecraft able to catch SwissCube-1 and remove it from orbit in the 2020 horizon.[13] Following a successful tender for European Space Agency funding, the Clean Space One project was redirected towards another target.[14]
These microcontrollers used two I2C buses to communicate : one main bus (all subsystems) and one fallback bus (only EPS and COM).The cubesat had 4 operation modes : recovery (not enough power to work), safe (minimum subsystems running), and two standard modes (all subsystems are working nominally).