University of Minho satellite to be launched today
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14 Jan 2025
The University of Minho’s PROMETHEUS-1 satellite will be launched this Tuesday, 14 January, from the Vanderberg spaceport in California, USA, on a Space X Falcon 9 rocket. The space object will remain at an altitude of around 500 kilometres and collect useful data for the academic and scientific community. This is an activity from UMinho, an Arqus member and contributes to affirming Portuguese science and industry in space.
The launch will be followed by a special ceremony at 7 p.m CET. in the hall of building 1 on the Azurém campus in Guimarães, which can also be followed online. The session will be welcomed by the Rector of UMinho, Rui Vieira de Castro, and the President of the School of Engineering (EEUM), Pedro Arezes. This will be followed by a presentation of PROMETHEUS-1 by Professor Alexandre Ferreira da Silva from EEUM’s Industrial Electronics Department.
The rocket launch is scheduled for 7.50 p.m. CET and will be broadcast via streaming at the ceremony. Until the satellite is released into space (‘deployment’), a protocol will be signed with the Portuguese Air Force and interventions will be made by Hugo Costa, a member of the executive board of the Portuguese Space Agency, and Henrique Candeias, chief engineer of the national satellite integrator N3O, as well as João Magalhães, co-director of the CMU Portugal International Partnership Programme, and Tom Walkinshaw, founder of the British satellite builder Alba Orbi.
Bringing space to the classroom
The satellite is the result of a scientific project of the same name that was funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology under the CMU Portugal Programme, in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University (USA) and the Instituto Superior Técnico. PROMETHEUS-1 is named after the Greek titan who stole fire (knowledge) from the gods. It’s like a Rubik’s cube, 5 centimetres on a side and weighing 250 grams. It has battery management and orientation systems, microcontrollers, and a camera similar to that of a mobile phone to capture images. From Earth, various items will have to be evaluated, such as positioning and any software errors.
This project takes place on the occasion of UMinho’s 50th anniversary and contributes to affirming Portuguese science and industry in space. It was conceived three years ago when UMinho opened a bachelor’s and master’s programme in Aerospace Engineering. The aim was to use the satellite in different disciplines as a case study with the students, from validating the platform to licensing and future data collection. Bringing space into the classroom allows students from various engineering disciplines to get their hands on this type of object for the first time and broaden their horizons. The project is also part of UMinho’s ongoing research and teaching strategy in this area.
Its Aerospace Engineering course had the second-highest entry grade in the country (and the first in 2023). The academy’s scientific centres and interfaces have also created projects such as the design of a space capsule, the design of an astronaut suit for Mars, the exploration of new artificial materials, or the production of electricity from urine and biohydrogen. Its spin-off Stratosphere also has clients like the European Space Agency, Boeing, and Airbus. UMinho is also home to the MIT-Portugal Programme, with various projects on space, and collaborates on these issues with CEiiA, the Technological Institute of Aeronautics in Brazil, and the universities of Massachusetts Lowell (USA) and Vigo (Spain), among others.
A new phase in the national space ecosystem
The licence to launch, command, and control PROMETHEUS-1 was only the third of its kind awarded by ANACOM, after the recent MH-1 (Aeros) and ISTSat-1 satellites. Curiously, tomorrow, ‘PoSat 2’, from the LusoSpace company, will be launched from the same Falcon 9. It is considered to be the first Portuguese commercial satellite and will monitor climate change and the oceans.
‘It’s a milestone in this new phase in the development of the national space ecosystem, in which satellites entirely developed and built in Portugal are once again launched into Earth orbit,’ said ANACOM. The PROMETHEUS-1 licence was granted under the new legal framework, which is ‘among the best practices’, allowing agility, flexibility, speed, and no fees. The licence also safeguards the Portuguese state’s international responsibilities and national strategic interests, as well as imposing a set of duties in terms of space sustainability and safety.
