The Athens-based non-profit Libre Space Foundation says all eight picosatellites tied to its technology on SpaceX’s Transporter-18, launched from Vandenberg on 1 October, are now operating. Four are its own SIDLOC PocketQubes, registered as Greek, which test an open standard that lets small spacecraft identify themselves and be tracked from the ground. Three were built for AMSAT Deutschland from the foundation’s open-source designs. The eighth is a 5 cm cube for students of a Nazarbayev Intellectual School in Astana, after Kazakhstan’s space agency approached the foundation. Its SatNOGS network of more than 400 ground stations in over 50 countries listens to them all. Our take: a small Greek team exporting open hardware to other countries is a quietly impressive model as low orbit gets crowded.
8picosatellites working
5 cmcube edge