Waratah Seed have reached a major milestone in our mission to launch Waratah Seed-1 in early 2024, and are thrilled to announce that we have received all partner payloads, including the delivery of the Submillimeter Particle Detection System (SPaDeS) payload.
The SPaDeS payload is an impressive piece of technology, designed at the School of Physics, University of Sydney, led by Quinn Musulin, Iver Cairns, Joe Khachan, Philip Leong, and multiple students from the “Inventing the Future” course.
The primary purpose of the SPaDeS payload is to detect sub-mm particle impacts on a satellite's body. A secondary goal is to measure waves in Earth's ionospheric plasma and to measure the ionospheric density and temperature. To accomplish these goals, the instrument continuously measures the electric field spectrum around the satellite using a dipole antenna connected to a custom-built PCB for signal amplification and processing.
“We are looking forward to our first detections of space debris in orbit, both of human and natural origin, and then detecting their orbits and changes with time. It is a really exciting time.” - Professor Iver Cairns, Director of CUAVA
The SPaDeS payload is a low-frequency version of the CUAVA-2 satellite’s Electron Density and Debris Instrument (EDDI), focusing primarily on detection of space debris.
We are very grateful to Investment NSW for funding the flight of the SPaDeS payload on Waratah Seed. They were able to step in at short notice to provide essential funding for us. This led to the Waratah Seed project having sufficient funds to sign its first launch contract and proceed. Go Waratah Seed!" - Professor Iver Cairns, Director of CUAVA
Congratulations to the team and keep up to date with our news at waratahseed.space.
