DUTHSat

A Greek participation in the QB50 initiative

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the Democritus University of Thrace has a long-term involvement in space science and technology. It submitted a proposal to join the QB50 team in 2012, and currently DUTH is officially listed as one of the participating universities. Participation in the QB50 consortium provides the science sensors and coordination of the project, whereas each participant of QB50 needs to design and develop their own CubeSat, securing funding through institutional or national funds. In addition, each team needs to contribute towards launch costs. For DUTHSat funding for the development of the satellite was secured through a competitive proposal to the “ARISTEIA” program, which is part of the Operational Program: Education and Lifelong Learning, a research grant that is co-funded by the European Social Fund (ESF) and National Resources and managed by the General Secretariat for Research and Technology (GSRT). Furthermore, the contribution towards launch costs was sponsored by Raycap S.A., a Greek company that manufactures and supports advanced solutions for telecommunications, renewable energy, transportation and other applications worldwide.

DUTHSat “Flat-Sat” model: During “flat-sat” integration, all subsystems of DUTHSat are interconnected before integration and DUTHSat is tested as a system