We will finally reach the space this year!

Last year we established cooperation with Spacemanic and became part of the Slovak Organization for Space Activities (SOSA), which created the first Slovak satellite skCUBE. It has successfully reached Earth's orbit and nowadays, along with Spacemanic, we are participating in the production of next satellite, which makes us extremely happy!

How did it come about?

The situation about the coronavirus, which is rolling around the world, has delayed the launch of the Soyuz 2 rocket, which was planned for the end of May 2020. This rocket was launch to space a miniature Slovak nanosatellite GRBAlpha, manufactured by the Faculty of Aviation of the Technical University in Košice.

GRBAlpha is a miniature nanosatellite that has to observe gamma-ray flashes in Earth's orbit. It gets to space by taking second place in the GK Launch Services international competition for free space flight.

If the project is successfully completed by May 20, 2020, the Russian Soyuz 2 space rocket will get it into space and launch it into orbit. In order to successfully complete this project and to allow Slovakia to move further beyond our planet, we have started to cooperate on the programming of the onboard computer to be used in the GRBAlph nanosatellite.

A small step for humanity, a big step for us

Along with other developers, we develop on-board computer software to collect sensor data while communicating with other satellite modules. The computer has its own filesystem and a unique WDog that is resistant to radiation. The satellite can safely collect and archive data from tasks that have been entered from Earth. Subsequently, the tasks are performed and the data from the tasks can be “downloaded” and viewed on Earth.

We are currently working on implementing bus drivers, by which the modules and peripherals will communicate with each other. Interestingly, nanosatellite can be controlled from the Earth using a command line and data transfer is happening in real time. GRBAlpha can take tasks remotely, which means we can assign tasks to it without being known in advance. Tasks can be one-off or periodically repeated. Therefore, if we enter a nanosatellite task, for example, to take a picture and save it when it reaches a certain ordinate, it can send the photo to a file system and it is possible to download it on Earth. If we ask it to measure temperature every hour and send us this information, it will do it repeatedly until we cancel the task.

If the project is successfully completed, M2M Solutions will be in space for the first time in a month.

Keep your fingers crossed!