Lift-off for OSCAR-QUBE, now en route to the International Space Station

The team powering OSCAR-QUBE are a group of learners from the University of Hasselt, in Belgium. They are trailblazers, staying the 1st to start their experiment as part of ESA Training Office’s Orbit Your Thesis! programme, and the 1st college student workforce to check a quantum technology sensing device in house.

Orbit Your Thesis! is a palms-on ESA educational programme that helps university college students realise the dream of placing an experiment of their have design into area. As energetic individuals, the OSCAR-QUBE pupils have been assisted at each and every phase of their journey by ESA professionals on-hand to present expert guidance and mentoring, aiding not only to establish the experiment, but also investing in the pupils them selves, equipping them with the capabilities and mindsets needed for potential professions in the house sector.

OSCAR-QUBE’s mission is to produce a in depth map of Earth’s magnetic subject. It helps make use of a new form of magnetometer that exploits quantum sensing, that means that it is remarkably delicate, offers exceptional nanoscale-stage resolution, better than 100-nanosecond reaction time, and a massive bandwidth. These capabilities mix to build a strong experiment that, the moment in its outstanding observational posture in orbit, will enable it to map the Earth’s magnetic field to an unrivalled stage of precision. It has been developed and constructed solely by the university college students, and they will go on to handle functions all through its four-thirty day period keep onboard the Worldwide Room Station.

“Thanks to the Orbit Your Thesis programme OSCAR-QUBE has won the option to show the viability of this sensor in area on-board the ISS.” The group claimed in interview, “The actuality that our project will be launch to the ISS is very exciting… To have a area on the ISS is a quite big honour, and it motivates you even extra to get the job done more durable.”

The learners are continue to buzzing with exhilaration from the launch, and anticipation is increasing for the up coming stage of their adventure. OSCAR-QUBE will now spend many times journeying to the Global Area Station, and at the time onboard it will be downloaded by ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet. He has been tasked with meticulously installing OSCAR-QUBE into the ICE Cubes facility, and then its mission will start!

For far more OSCAR-QUBE updates be certain to look at the Orbit Your Thesis! portal