Jovian-1 Spacecraft

Payloads include: camera to take images and videos; a FUNcube; elements of a future Dark Matter experiment; a space radiation monitor: a Tiny Machine Learning payload.

This will contain and power the five payloads being built by the University of Southampton, the University of Portsmouth, Surrey Space Centre at the University of Surrey, students from the three universities, and AMSAT UK.

A collaboration between the universities of Surrey, Portsmouth and Southampton, JUPITER – the Joint Universities Programme for In-Orbit Training, Education and Research – will equip participants with invaluable hands-on space industry experience and training for their future careers.

Connecting business and academia, the pioneering programme will also help address the UK space sector’s growing demand for specialist skills, and demonstrate the impact of regional space clusters to boost innovation and growth as part of the National Space Strategy. In addition to its university relationships, Space South Central also represents more than 170 space-related businesses across Hampshire, Surrey and the Isle of Wight.

For JUPITER’s inaugural project, engineering and physics students from all three universities will design, build and test their own Earth observation payload for a satellite mission, be involved with its launch and, once in orbit, conduct mission operations from the University of Surrey’s ground station at Surrey Space Centre.

The satellite – Jovian-1 – will be around the size of a large shoe box and feature: 

• The payload designed, built, tested and delivered by students from the three universities which will take images and videos of the Earth and attempt to use a space-facing camera to look for space debris
• A FUNcube provided by AMSAT-UK, a communications payload which makes access to radio signals and data from the satellite possible using basic equipment, for schools, colleges and wider outreach
• Elements of a future Dark Matter experiment being undertaken by the University of Southampton, taking a significant first step in demonstrating the suitability of their hardware and concept for use in space
• A space radiation monitor from the University of Surrey to better understand space weather at the coming solar maximum and its effects on satellites. Space weather caused the impressive aurorae visible across much of the globe in May this year but can also pose risks to critical space infrastructure
• An innovative Tiny Machine Learning payload, led by the University of Portsmouth’s world-leading data-intensive research institute, the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, will be designed to work with all the other payloads. This will maximise the value of information sent to Earth from space and spearhead public outreach on the importance of space data and AI in all our lives.

Inside these boxes are different pieces of flight hardware which will enable us to build Jovian-1 and prepare it for launch. As well as the main platform, we received the low rate S-band and the On-Board Computer, both of which are critical to the mission.

The low rate S-band is the primary method the satellite will have of communicating with Earth. It was selected because it sends data using very little power. As anyone who listens in to operational meetings about satellite missions will tell you, it’s all about the power!

The On-Board Computer will process information from each of the five payloads which will fly with Jovian-1, and it also receives instructions and updates from the ground station back on Earth ensuring the satellite can be orientated and controlled.

This equipment will be unpacked, checked and housed in the clean room at Surrey Space Centre to ensure it isn’t contaminated by dust or grease. Then the Jovian-1 team will start testing to ensure good connections to the ground station and check that the software written by team members works and processes data. Meanwhile, work continues across the Space South Central region making each of the payloads.

• PLATFORM - GomSpace