Portugal’s second satellite will be launched into space on Monday from the United States to observe the oceans for three years.
“Aeros”, a 4.5 kilogram nano-satellite, will be on board a Falcon 9 rocket, which will take off from SpaceX’s Vandenberg base at 21:18 (Lisbon time), according to Thales Edisoft Portugal, leader of the national consortium that designed, built and will operate the device, and which brings together several companies and academic institutions.
The nano-satellite, which is being launched 30 years after “PoSat-1”, the first Portuguese satellite, will be in Earth orbit at an altitude of 510 kilometers, slightly above the International Space Station, the astronauts’ “home” and laboratory.
Communications and the collection of data and images will be carried out from the teleport of Santa Maria, in the Azores, maintained by Thales Edisoft Portugal.
The CEiiA engineering center in Matosinhos, one of the partners in the consortium that built the nanosatellite, will process the data and images for scientific studies.
The universities of Algarve, Porto and Minho, the Instituto Superior Técnico and Imar – Instituto do Mar, among others, are providing scientific support for the mission, which has also been joined by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in the United States, through the MIT-Portugal cooperation program.
“Aeros”, which began work in 2020, represents an investment of 2.78 million euros, co-financed to the tune of 1.88 million euros by Feder – the European Regional Development Fund.
This is the second Portuguese satellite after “PoSat-1”, a 50-kilogram microsatellite that was launched in September 1993, but has since been decommissioned.
The launch of “Aeros” can be seen on Monday in Portugal, at an event at CEiiA in Matosinhos.
