MENUT – the first Earth Observation satellite built and launched by Open Cosmos – has returned its first images, demonstrating the success of the satellite and an exciting moment for the leading SpaceTech company.
MENUT is a 6U Earth Observation nanosatellite which launched during SpaceX’s Transporter-6 mission in early January. The successful launch saw the satellite deployed from the Exolaunch deployer and the first signal was received just a few hours later.
Over the past few weeks, the Open Cosmos team has been hard at work in the Launch and Early Orbit Phase (LEOP) to ensure there was good communication and the satellite was stable in orbit, before moving onto the commissioning phase where each subsystem is tested to ensure standard functionality is operational. For the MENUT satellite, the subsystems need to integrate in order to perform complex actions such as image acquisition, satellite pointing and data download.
Encouragingly, just one month post-launch, Open Cosmos is now able to share the first images from MENUT with the customer: an infrared (greyscale) image of the swamps near New Orleans, USA, and a colour image (RGB) of clouds over Europe. This marks a major milestone for Open Cosmos as it looks to deliver further Earth Observation satellites in the next few years.
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