The Satellite Lab operates an automated ground station, located on the roof of Queen’s Building, that can receive and transmit data in the UHF and VHF bands. The ground station was repaired over the summer of 2023, following damage sustained to the antennas during a storm in 2019. Since then, preliminary tests on the ground … Read more
PROVE Pathfinder are excited to announce that we shall be represented at EGU 2023 by Deputy Project Manager, Thomas! He shall be presenting the environmental testing work that the team has recently completed in partnership with the ESA Education Office at the CubeSat Support Facility in Belgium and we are delighted that we have been … Read more
Say hello to the PROVE Pathfinder Team! We are a team of dedicated University of Bristol undergraduates, postgraduates and staff across multiple schools and faculties. Whilst a lot of our members study aerospace degrees, we also have members from electronics engineering, physics and earth sciences! We would like to thank Nick Yue for taking this … Read more
Our Visual Camera (the Basler ace acA5472-5GC) interfaces to our desgined-in-house PCB (more detail to follow in a later post) and to our payload computer (the BeagleBone Black Enhanced Industrial). It takes power via a Harwin Gecko connector from the PCB, and the data interface is Gigabit Ethernet on the payload computer. Out of the … Read more
After many months of work, we are pleased to announce that PROVE Pathfinder has finished assembly of its Engineering Model. Following a full software test – where everything we expected to pass did – we completed a test imaging pass on the physics building from the window of our lab – a little hard to … Read more
For our second post on the technical side of the project we are talking about software. The Flight Software (FSW) and Onboard Computer (OBC) is the central brain of any spacecraft. For PROVE Pathfinder, it controls when the system performs any action, like taking a picture, collecting telemetry or sending data to storage. The way … Read more
Our first update on technical things. This time from the structures team looking at the process of drilling sensitive optical components – at PROVE Pathfinder, that means lenses! Both our thermal infrared (TIR) and our optical (VIS) camera lenses are Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) and are not designed to be used in a vacuum … Read more
2 weeks ago we had a fantastic opportunity to host an event to share our project with aspiring young students as a part of the Access to Bristol scheme. UoBSat’s mission is not only to contribute to science but also to inform the public about engineering in space and the importance of space technology. The … Read more
UoBSat are delighted to announce that our new website is now live! We would particularly like to thank Vilius for all his hard work over the last 2 months to bring us into the modern age. Over the next few weeks, we shall frequently be posting on our blog and socials to update everyone on … Read more
Prove Pathfinder were delighted to welcome the CEO of the UK Space Agency, Paul Bate, to our lab in Bristol last week. We had the chance to speak with him and his team about the work we do at the University of Bristol to get undergraduate and postgraduate students alike involved in exciting space projects. … Read more