Flying with Avio

Signatures between ESA and Avio have secured three missions to fly as auxiliary passengers on the Vega-C rocket from the European Spaceport in French Guiana.

Spanish company Persei will get to operate its E.T. Packmission to demonstrate a solution to deorbit satellites using a kilometre-long aluminium tape that will be extended from the satellite. The tape, also called a tether, will generate an electric current as it passes through the plasma and geomagnetic field that surrounds our planet. This will create a force known as Lorentz drag which will slow down and deorbit a satellite. This fuel-free system offers a promising solution to reduce space debris, while keeping the satellite stable and avoiding collisions during deorbiting.

German Aerospace Center, DLR, will fly its Pluto cubesat to demonstrate a high-performance-yet-compact avionic system. Developed at DLR’s Institute of Space Systems in Bremen, Germany, Pluto+ will also test a flexible solar array capable of delivering 100 Watts of power. With this mission, DLR aims to show that advanced components typically used on larger satellites can also thrive on smaller satellites.

French company Grasp is developing an Earth observation constellation. Under the contract signed, their second satellite in the constellation, GapMap-1, will launch on Vega-C. It will carry a new type of instrument, a short-wave infrared spectrometer, designed to detect greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This satellite follows an earlier demonstrator already in orbit. The constellation takes detailed measurements by scanning the atmosphere with 60 measurements on each pass overhead, providing more accurate data on air pollution and climate change.