Alpha Solar Sail Mission Launched: A First for Europe

The Alpha solar sail mission, the first such mission for Europe, was launched last week aboard the SpaceX Transporter-6 mission. The 6U nanosatellite manufactured by Kongsberg NanoAvionics is one of four satellites built by the Lithuanian smallsat mission integrator for multiple customers that were sent into low Earth Orbit.

"Solar sails are one of the future propulsion methods for small satellites exploring deep space."

Vytenis J. Buzas, co-founder and CEO of NanoAvionics.

Alpha is the first time that one of NanoAvionics' nanosatellite buses has carried a solar sail payload into space. A second solar sail mission, using a 12U nanosatellite bus by the company, will be NASA’s composite solar sail system (ACS3).

"Solar sails are one of the future propulsion methods for small satellites exploring deep space," said Vytenis J. Buzas, co-founder and CEO of NanoAvionics. "Being the first European company to integrate solar sails into satellite buses and test them while in orbit puts us in a unique position within the space industry.”

Alpha Solar Sail Mission had a lot of Company

Also on board were two other 6U nanosatellites (‘Birkeland’ and ‘Huygens’) built by NanoAvionics for a consortium of Norwegian and Dutch research centers. The MilSpace2 mission is the first known two-satellite system to detect, classify, and accurately geolocate radio frequency signals. The two satellites will fly in formation at a close proximity of about 12 miles.

The MilSpace2 mission is not the only application that can benefit from NanoAvionics bus capabilities to fly in swarms and operate as a single entity. This is an important feature for swarm missions ranging from remote sensing, to orbital reconnaissance for debris mitigation and other space infrastructure needs.

The fourth satellite carries an Earth observation payload for an undisclosed customer.

Confirming successful communications with all four satellites, NanoAvionics’s mission control center continues executing the early operations phase (LEOP) to configure and validate the satellites for their primary mission objectives.

“With this first successful launch in 2023, NanoAvionics is off to a great start. We plan to deliver and launch more than 20 satellites to customers this year, up from 15 in 2022. This plan includes our first 100+ kg satellite based on our MP42 microsatellite bus,” Buzas said. “And for the third consecutive year, we nearly doubled both our revenue and our team size.”

(Source: NanoAvionics news release. Images provided)