Pegasus (QB50 AT03) (original) (raw)

Pegasus [FWN]

Pegasus is an Austrian 2U-CubeSat designed by the Fachhochschule Wiener Neustadt participating in the QB50 project.

Pegasus is equipped with the multi-needle Langmuir probes (mNLP) for the QB50 project and provided information about essential properties of the plasma in the thermosphere such as the electron temperature and �density. It also includes an attitude control system, an on-board computer, telecommunication devices, an electrical power systems allowing to harvest the solar power and either distribute or store it for later use, a thermal control system.

In addition to the above, Pegasus also features a propulsion system which, if successful, would be the first time to use such a system on a nanosatellite. It features a Pulsed Plasma Thruster (PPT) as propulsion unit. The propulsion unit consists of four miniaturized PPTs, so called �PPTs. All four of them are assembled on one Printed Circuit Board (PCB) and can be individually fired. The unit has a typical total power requirement of < 2.5 W with an 1 Hz discharge frequency and weights 294 g. The system of four �PPTs can deliver a total Δv of roughly 5.5 m/s for Pegasus.

The QB50 project, which demonstrates the possibility of launching a network of 50 CubeSats built by Universities Teams all over the world to perform first-class science in the largely unexplored lower thermosphere.

The satellite is one of six QB50 science satellites, which were to be launched on a Dnepr rocket on the QB50-DS flight. When the availability of Dnepr launch vehicle had become doubtful, they were transfered to an Indian PSLV-XL launch.