i-INSPIRE 2 (QB50 AU03) (original) (raw)

i-INSPIRE 2 [University of Sydney]

i-INSPIRE 2 is an Australian 2U-CubeSat designed by University of Sydney participating in the QB50 project.

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.

As a payload for QB50, the satellite carries a multineedle Langmuir probe (mNLP) sampling the electron density of the space around it.

At the same time it carries three scientific instruments to fulfill the observation in orbit. It carrries a small COTS low resolution imager, the in-house developed NanoSpec Photonic spectrograph and a Geiger radiation counter. Furthermore, the drivers for each instrument are designed and implemented on the MSP430 processor.

The satellite was launched with the bulk of the QB50 constellation to the ISS in 2017, from where the satellite was deployed on 26 May 2017.