Successfully launched the first Croatian CroCube satellite: It established the first communication with Earth

The first Croatian CroCube satellite was successfully launched into space on Saturday from the American space base Vandenberg, SFB in California, and more established the first communication with Earth, marking Croatia’s historic entry into the era of space technology, it was announced from the CroCube mission.

CroCube was launched on the Falcon 9 rocket of the space company SpaceX, as part of the Bandwagon-2 mission in the USA. Croatia thus joined the list of 80+ countries with their own satellite in space, reported the head of the CroCube mission, Daniela Jovi.

The successful launch of the satellite began today at 12:34 p.m. Croatian time. At 14:16 CroCube successfully deployed from the rocket and flew into its permanent equatorial orbit around the Earth at an altitude of about 550 km, where it will remain for about two years.

At 15:05 in the afternoon, CroCube successfully communicated via radio and sent the first signal to Earth. A recording of the launch of the rocket can be viewed on the official SpaceX Youtube channel (Bandwagon-2 mission).

“CroCube is in nominal, good condition. We monitor its telemetry data through the global SATNOGS network, which brings together radio amateurs with powerful ground stations and enables satellite tracking around the world. The interested public can now track CroCube via our mobile applications that can be downloaded for free via the App Store or Play Store,” said the head of the mission Jović.

The CroCube satellite introduced Croatia into the space era

CroCube is a nanosatellite measuring 10 x 10 x 10 cm and weighing 1.1 kg, which will photograph the Earth and conduct scientific measurements from its orbit at an altitude of 510 km for the next two years.

This historical event just introduced Croatia into the space era and removed numerous administrative, technological and logistical obstacles on the way to space, Jovi said.

The main goal of the project is to encourage the technological development of Croatia and increase interest in astronomy and space projects with the development of (STEM) science and high-tech entrepreneurship.

The secondary goal is to collect data from the Croatian-made scientific module Astrotron 1000, which is built into the CroCube, and which collects data on the degradation of microelectronics under conditions of high radiation and extreme temperature conditions.

Future Croatian space companies will be able to base their commercial projects on the data from these measurements.

The launch of the CroCube satellite is the result of three years of work by dozens of volunteers in Croatia on the čel with the mission manager, Daniela Jović. In cooperation with the Czech company Spacemanic and the Outside the Box Education Association (EVO), this volunteer team successfully designed, assembled and launched the first Croatian satellite. However, he says, the launch of the satellite is not the end of this project.

“As challenging as these first three years of work leading up to the launch were, only now is the real work coming. Now that we volunteers have proven that Croatia can, and have removed administrative and logistical obstacles, now the others need to step forward and start want to be part of the space industry, which is predicted to be worth 1 billion dollars by 2030. Some Croatian companies that are partners at project, many have stepped forward in the realization of the first commercial projects in the space business, and we are available to all other interested parties with our acquired knowledge, experience and support,” said Daniela Jovi.

She added that they are currently arranging an educational and presentation space in Zagreb so that it would be available to everyone.

Information about the CroCube satellite can be read on the website www.crocube.hr

The participants of the mission will inform the Croatian public about the success of the CroCube mission and the reception of the first signals from space from the first Croatian satellite at a press conference on Monday, December 23 at 10 a.m. in the Zagreb ZICER area at the Zagreb Fair. Everyone involved in the first Croatian space mission will participate, it was announced.