ARLA/CLUSTER: Estudantes israelitas constroem um CubeSat

[João Costa > CT1FBF]

Israeli High School Students Build Duchifat-2 Cubesat


Over 80 Israeli high school students from schools in Herzliya, Ofakim,
Yeruham, the West Bank settlement of Ofra, and the Bedouin town of
Hura, have built a Cubesat called Duchifat-2 as part of the European
Union’s QB50 Thermosphere research programme.

Duchifat-2 is one of 28 Cubesats from 23 countries built for the EU’s
QB50 programme, but is the only one that has been built by high school
students. The Cubesats were launched on a U.S. Atlas-5 rocket on April
18, 2017, from Cape Canaveral in Florida, United States. The Cubesats
will be delivered to the International Space Station (ISS) from where
they shall be placed into orbit in six weeks time.

Duchifat-2 and its companion Cubesats will measure the plasma density
of the Thermosphere between 85km and 300km altitude above the Earth’s
surface. Israeli students will study the data from the Cubesats at the
Herzliya Science Centre, where signals from the orbiting satellites
will be received.

Israeli Minister for Science, Technology, and Space, Ofir Akunis, said
in a government statement that, “Duchifat-2 is not only an educational
venture that brings space closer to youth and lays the way for
tomorrow’s generation, it is also an international research project.
This is Israeli pride for the future generation, and an opportunity to
increase public awareness about space.”

Duchifat-2 took two years to build and was funded by the Israel Space
Agency, with the project supervised by the Herzliya Science Centre.
The high school students were helped in their efforts by engineers
from Israeli company Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) and the Israel
Space Agency.

Duchifat-1 was launched in 2014 and was also built by Israeli high
school students. That satellite is still in orbit and assists in
locating lost people in areas without mobile telephone coverage.

Original published at:
https://spacewatchme.com/2017/04/israeli-high-school-students-build-duchifat-2-cubesat/