Danish Student CubeSat Program
(DISCO)
Planet Earth, is control on?
The DISCO Program
The Danish Student CubesSat Program, also known as DISCO, is a national CubeSat program in Denmark. It is a collaboration between  Aarhus University (AU), the University of Southern Denmark (SDU), IT University of Denmark (ITU), and Aalborg University (AAU). The program also involves collaboration with several space companies including Space Inventor and GomSpace.
The goal of the DISCO program is to increase the number of skilled people with the right competences for the Danish space industry as well as high tech companies. The program also aims to further increase interest in STEM educations in Denmark among girls and boys and place Denmark on the world map within space and education.
Why are CubeSats relevant?
CubeSats are small, low-cost satellites that have made space science accessible to education. They have broadened participation in space, provided hands-on educational opportunities, and enabled innovative, exploratory space research. CubeSats are more accessible to users beyond government agencies and commercial industries. These new users include universities, small countries’ space agencies, citizen science groups, start-ups, hobbyists, and even artists.
What students can gain from working on CubeSats and CubeSat technology?
Working on CubeSats and CubeSat technology provides students with hands-on learning opportunities in aerospace engineering. It improves their science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education. Students experience a different level of engagement when the thing they build is going into space. CubeSats can be used for exploratory, high-risk research because of their inexpensive and quick development. This enables new users from across different disciplines to contribute their ideas and unique skill sets to small satellite design. With both more participants and more diverse participants, solutions to challenges in space and on Earth can be faster and more creative.
DISCO-1
DISCO-1 is the first of several DISCO CubeSat missions. Its mission is to serve as a proof-of-concept and test platform, mainly for allowing the DISCO team to get aquanted with, and work on CubeSat technology, as wel las the whole process of going from concept to a sattelite in space.
The DISCO-1 satellite, which is a 1U CubeSat, hosts a UHF radio and a Coral Dev Board Mini single-board computer with a Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) coprocessor. During the mission , the usability of a Coral TPU in space will be tested.

DISCO-1 Mission Patch.

DISCO-1: Stats for nerds
Launch date: April 15, 2023
Launch vehicle: SpaceX Falcon 9
Launch Mission: SpaceX Transporter-7
International Code (NSSDC IC): 2023-054AW
Perigee: 486.6 km
Apogee: 505.8 km
Inclination: 97.4°
Period: 94.4 minutes
Semi major axis: 6867 km
Information from N2YO.com.

SpaceX Transporter-7 Mission on which the DISCO-1 sattelite was launched into space.

DISCO-2
DISCO-2 is the second satellite in the program and is expected to be finished in 2023 and launched into a polar orbit during Summer 2024. The main purpose of DISCO-2 is to photograph areas in the Arctic, supporting research in climate changes. 
The satellite is a 10x10x30 cm cubesat, equipped with three cameras; two RGB cameras with different focal lenght optics, and a third FLIR camera for temperature observations. Furthermore, the DISCO-2 sattelite will also be outfitted with S-band communication for increased downlink bandwidth, compared to teh DISCO-1 sattelite.

DISCO-2 Mission Patch.

The DISCO Team
(PH-Text)

DISCO Team Lead - Kristian Bonde Kirch
Student: BEng in Mechatronics
Mail: krkir@student.sdu.dk

Active subprojects
(PH-Text)
Interesting reading material
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