This is a guest post by Märt Ridala, head of the MicroLink Incubator program.
In 2007 the students of Tallinn Technical University and Tartu University joined to build the first ever Estonian satellite. Student satellite is a new thing for Estonia but a rather usual project in the world.
Actually tens of student satellites are sent to space every year. There are even technical standards and standard “on the shelf” devices for such projects. You can read more about it on ECSS website and CubeSAT website .
The Estonian satellite will follow the standard physical limits of 1 liter and 1 kg. It will probably be sent so space by a Chinese or Indian rocket. The difference compared to ordinary student satellite projects is that the team wants to get some serious scientific information out of the it. The goal is to test “solar wind sailing”.
There is more about the concept of electric solar wind sail here, but in a nutshell the idea is the following. There is a constant flow of protons flying from the Sun. Protons as you know are positively charged. The electric solar wind sail consists of “really long” and “really light” wires. These wires will be positively charged with the help of an electron gun and energy generated by the satellites solar panel.
So when the protons hit the positively charged wires they push the whole sail and therefore the whole satellite. The really long and really light mean 20kilometers long and 20 micrometers thick wires. When charged the magnetic field around the wires will create “a sail” with the radius of several kilometers. This big sail will accelerate the satellite to the speed of 30 km/s within one year. Note! 30 km a second not 30 km an hour! With the speed of 30 km/s you can get to Pluto in 5 years.
The budget of the project is about one million Estonian crowns (that’s a bit more than 60 000 euros). Half of it is the price of sending the satellite to space. In this case to 400 km’s from Earth.
The team consists of students from Tallinn Technical University and Tartu University and there is big help from Finnish and German scientists. Actually the idea of testing solar wind sailing originates from Finnish space scientists.
The team will build much of the equipment by themselves. At the moment the satellites control center is ready. The satellite will be launched to space hopefully in 2012 or 2013.
