Plzen, West Bohemia, April 2 (CTK) – The city of Plzen is preparing a space satellite together with the West Bohemian University (ZCU) and talented secondary school students that is to reach the orbit next year, the project’s manager Jiri Masopust from the ZCU electrotechnical faculty, has told CTK.
The town previously offered secondary school students to participate in the planned outer space experiments. Out of dozens of applicants, five student teams were chosen who are preparing the satellite technologies in cooperation with experts.
The Pilsen Cube II satellite, shaped as a cube with the edge of 10 cm and weighing about one kilogram, will be completed in the summer and then tested until the end of the year.
Afterwards, it will depend on when it will be allotted place in a rocket carrying satellites into the orbit. The waiting time is up to nine months.
Since big space agencies are expensive, the Plzen team will probably use services of India, China or Japan.
“The project has clearly met its purpose to bring more students to technical sciences, namely space technologies. We have earmarked 1.5 million crowns for it,” Plzen Mayor Martin Zrzavecky (Social Democrats, CSSD) said on behalf of the city.
The sum will cover the launch of the satellite. The real costs, however, include the know-how of the faculty, which has been dealing with space technologies as the only such workplace in the Czech Republic, the know-how of the cooperating firms, the production technologies and thousands of hours of labour of about 40 people, Zrzavecky said.
“We estimated the net costs of the satellite project at about 35 million crowns,” said Masopust.
Secondary school students have proposed experiments for Pilsen Cube II to make in the orbit and completed prototype devices which they are trying to build in the picosatellite.
“It is something exceptional that secondary-school projects fly into outer space,” Masopust said.
He said the planned experiments are to gain data on high energy space particles that will help explain the impact of radiation on people’s everyday life.
The satellite will be orbiting the Earth at the altitude of 450 to 600 kilometres and we expect the students to receive data from it for one to two years, said Ludek Santora, head of the municipal IT administration.
