SOMP Students Oxygen Measurement Project – Image credit Technische Universität Dresden

The Student Oxygen Measurement Project (SOMP) is a cubesat developed by students of the Technische Universität Dresden, Germany, organized in the Students’ Research Group for Spacecraft Engineering in Dresden (STARD). SOMP will be a standard sized single CubeSat (10X10X10 cm) with one payload side and five sides with two solar cells each. The antenna concept foresees a 4 monopole concept. The CubeSat will be able to determine and to a limited extent, also control the attitude.

It is planned to launch on April 19, 2013, from Baikonur in Kazakhstan along with OSSI-1, BEESAT2 and BEESAT3. A variety of downlink options on 437.485 MHz have been proposed, including CW, 1k2 and 9k6 BPSK and AX25 FSK also AO40 standard 400bit/s BPSK

SOMP is an educational satellite project. Designing and developing SOMP will allow the students to practically apply their knowledge and gaining unique hands-on experience in many aspects of a space project. The mission objectives are:

1. Prototype development of a satellite bus

2. Verification of the satellite

3. Launch of the satellite SOMP

4. Establishment of first contact with SOMP

5. Operation of the satellite to fulfill scientific mission objectives

SOMP has two scientific objectives: the first objective is to measure the concentration of atomic oxygen in the upper atmosphere using an oxygen electrolyte sensor. The second is the testing of flexible thin film solar cells (TFSC), that have never been tested in space before.

Contact the SOMP team at stard@mailbox.tu-dresden.de

SOMP http://phpweb.tu-dresden.de/stard/SOMP/?lang=en