“There will be a control center in the Prague Planetarium open for school excursions and workshops, during which high school students, as well as pupils of the last years of primary school, get acquainted with individual branches of the space industry, “wrote Jakub Rozehnal, director of the Planetum organization, which sponsors the Prague Planetarium and Observatories.

“With the satellite, they will be able to go directly communicate and obtain flight data or take orbital images. There will be space for university students to cooperate in bachelor’s or master’s theses, “added Rozehnal. According to the director, the satellite will be called Planetum1 jubilee 10th satellite in the history of the Czech Republic and Czechoslovakia.

Planetum1 belongs to the class of so-called cubesats – small satellites composed of “cubes” with standardized dimensions of 10 x 10 x 10 centimeters. According to Rozehnal, Planetum1 will be the basic version with one unit (1U).

The course of the flight

After an approximately eight-minute flight on a rocket carrier, the satellite is to be launched along with other cargo in a special container – the so-called deployer. After verifying the path parameters then the satellite will travel into free space. It will orbit about 550 kilometers above the Earth’s surface with a period of 90 minutes at a speed of almost 28,000 kilometers per hour. “At this speed, the satellite would cover the distance between Prague and Brno in just 20 seconds,” Rozehnal said, adding that the satellites will also be 100 to 200 kilometers higher than the International Space Station (ISS).

Planetum1 will orbit the so-called heliosynchronous orbit with an inclination of approximately 98 degrees to the Earth’s equator. “The satellite is moving in a heliosynchronous orbit between the poles of the planet so that it is above the illuminated side of the earth’s surface, but at the same time close to the terminator – the interface of light and shadow, “remarked the director.

Communication will be through a radio signal on amateur radio frequencies, which will allow amateur radio to receive data from satellites. “Thanks to an active orientation system that allows the satellite to be shot, and thus camera settings with an accuracy of better than 1.5 degrees, Planetum1 will be the best spatially oriented 1U satellite in the world,” said the head of the planetarium. The satellite will also carry a device for measuring the Earth’s magnetic field.

The magnetometer will be on a tilting arm, which will be released after launching the satellite so that there is only a minimal effect on the electromagnetic noise of the on-board instruments. “The sensors on board will thus allow the measurement of the basic physical parameters of the near space environment,” the director noted. The Czech start-up Spacemanic and the Research and Testing Aviation Institute in Prague cooperated in the preparation of the satellite. Project the capital city of Prague.

Recharged by the sun

“Before the satellite travels from one pole to the other, the terminator will move on the opposite side so that the satellites will fly over the illuminated surface again. In other words – the sun will still shine on the satellite, which will allow you to constantly recharge the batteries from the solar panels, “explained Rozehnal.

Epicenter – Vladimir Remek Martin Valeš, Lukáš Červený