GOMX 4A, 4B (Ulloriaq) (original) (raw)

GOMX 4 [GOMSpace]

GOMSpace's GOMX-4A and 4B are 6U CubeSat for demonstrating key technologies to handle large satellite formations.

GOMSpace builds GOMX-4A for the Danish Ministry of Defence and GOMX-4B for ESA under separate contracts.

GOMX-4A is sponsored by DALO who by this mission will have their first satellite intended to contribute to surveilance of the Artic. The GOMX-4A demonstration is part of an analysis seeking to identify best-practice and future efforts reinforcing the Danish Defense�s surveillance of the Artic within the Kingdom. The satellite has been named Ulloriaq after the word �star� in the Greenlandic language.

The ESA satellite GOMX-4B has the mission to demonstrate inter-satellite linking and station keeping capabilities; key enabling technologies for future nanosatellite constellations. It features four 1 mN cold gas thrusters fueled by Butane to provide a total deltaV 15 m/s.

The two CubeSats will stay linked through a new version of the software-defined radio system demonstrated on GOMX-3, while their relative positions along their shared orbit is controlled up to a maximum 4500 km. The same radio system will also be used for rapid payload data downloads to Earth. Nanospace in Sweden are contributing the highly miniaturised cold-gas thrusters for controlling the orbit, allowing future CubeSat-based constellations to be deployed quickly after launch.

Addition technology payloads include a compact hyperspectral imager called HyperScout, developed by Cosine Research in the Netherlands; a miniaturised startracker from Innovative Solutions In Space, also in the Netherlands; an inhouse ESA experiment to test components for radiation hardness; and an ADS-B antenna for aircraft tracking, developed from the GomSpace system tested on GOMX-3.

Both GOMX 4A and GOMX 4B were launched together in 2018.

In 2019, OQ Technology signed a contract with GomSpace to implement its Tiger-1 mission. The Tiger-1 mission made use of GOMX-4A and GOMX-4B and its on-board SDR payload which can be programmed in space. This mission is also a pathfinder to OQ�s upcoming satellite mission dubbed as MAChine SATellite (MACSAT) in collaboration with the European Space Agency.