Important Facts For Prelims
INSPIRESAT-1 Cubesat Satellite
- 29 Sep 2021
- 3 min read
Why in News
INSPIRESat-1 CubeSat, developed under the International Satellite Program in Research and Education (INSPIRE), is ready for launch.
Key Points
- About:
- It is a small scientific satellite which will be placed in a low earth orbit, equipped with a Compact Ionosphere Probe for studying the earth's ionosphere.
- The ionosphere is the part of the atmosphere that is ionized by solar radiation.
- CIP is an all-in-one plasma sensor that uses a single instrument to perform multiple sensor functions in a time-sharing mechanism.
- It will also provide a greater understanding of why the Sun’s corona is orders of magnitude hotter than the photosphere, why there is an abundance of elements change during different solar events, and how these events affect the earth’s ionosphere.
- An order of magnitude is an exponential change of plus-or-minus 1 in the value of a quantity or unit.
- It weighs less than 10kg and will be launched aboard an upcoming Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
- PSLV is the third generation launch vehicle of India. It is the first Indian launch vehicle to be equipped with liquid stages.
- It is a four-staged launch vehicle with first and third stages using solid rocket motors and second and fourth stages using liquid rocket engines.
- It is a small scientific satellite which will be placed in a low earth orbit, equipped with a Compact Ionosphere Probe for studying the earth's ionosphere.
- Developed By:
- Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado Boulder in the U.S.
- National Central University, Taiwan
- Nanyang Technological University in Singapore
- Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST)
INSPIRE
- INSPIRE is a consortium of universities with active space programs, formed to advance space science and engineering.
- A constellation of earth and space-weather observation satellites is envisaged under the INSPIRE program which includes a series of INSPIRESats i:e INSPIRESat-1 to INSPIRESat-7.
Cubesat
- A cube satellite (cubesat) is a standardized, low cost, small satellite design typically used for technological demonstration and research.
- It is a Nanosatellite and other Nanosatellites include PocketQubes, TubeSats, Sun Cubes, ThinSats etc.
- Nanosatellites are any satellite weighing less than 10 kilograms.
