First N.B.-made satellite set to launch to International Space Station

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The province’s first satellite, built by a team of University of New Brunswick students, is set to launch to the International Space Station this week.

Hundreds of students and graduates had a hand in the final CubeSAT product, named VIOLET after the provincial flower, which is scheduled to begin its journey to space on Thursday at 5:55 p.m.

Brent Petersen, a co-principal investigator and professor of electrical and computer engineering at UNB, said the satellite will then be shot out from the ISS in the April or May deployment phase.

The two-kilogram satellite will be deployed into low orbit, or about 400 kilometres above the surface of the Earth, where it’s hoped it will remain until it burns up in three to six months, Petersen said.

While spinning around Earth during that time – once every 92 minutes – students will be studying how atoms and molecules in the atmosphere affect its orbit.

Speaking with Brunswick News last year, VIOLET principal investigator and UNB geomatics engineering professor Richard Langley said the data collected should provide unique input into the Earth’s atmosphere.

“Every time it goes around once, we download all the data from it. It goes around again, collects more data, we download data. If everything is successful … we’ll have all this data, we’ll measure it, and we’ll start to analyze it and start to look at it,” Petersen said.

“It will take decades to understand it. It’s very valuable.”

He said the launch is a significant milestone for the team.

“We would never have believed when we embarked on this journey to build New Brunswick’s first satellite that we’d get it done, and we have,” he said.

“So the message there is, if there’s something that, not related to space but something that inspires you, work on it. If you’re passionate about it you can accomplish miracles just by keeping at it.”