SwissCube: The First Entirely-Built Swiss Student Satellite with an Earth Observation Payload

In 2006, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in cooperation with other Swiss academic and industrial partners started the Swiss Cube project based on the Cube Sat program. The primary objective of the Swiss Cube project is to provide a dynamic and realistic learning environment for undergraduates, graduates and to foster the development of small satellite technologies. Besides the educational objectives, the Swiss Cube mission objective is to observe the air-glow phenomenon (intensity) over selected latitudes and longitudes for a period of 4 months (possibly up to I year). The payload consists of a telescope which takes images of the airglow emissions. The telescope has a length of 50 mm. At one end, a CMOS detector captures images with a resolution of 188 x 120 pixels and a pixel size of 24 mu m via a focusing optics. A bandpass filter centered at 767 nm, with a bandwidth of 20 nm, selects the desired wavelength of the airglow. At the other end, a baffle protects the optical system and the detector from straylight.