First internet-built student satellite ready for launch

SSETI Express, a low Earth orbit spacecraft designed and built by European university students under the supervision of ESA’s Education Department, is to be launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome on a Russian Cosmos 3M launcher on 27 September in the morning.

On that occasion, ESA will be organising a launch event at Space Expo, the public visitors’ centre close to ESA/ESTEC at Noordwijk in the Netherlands. A live televised transmission of the launch will bring images from Plesetsk and Space Expo to broadcasters and the general public across Europe. Specialists will be on hand for explanations and interviews, while schoolchildren will be invited to attend several activity workshops to express their views and enthusiasm for space.

The tentative programme for the day is as follows:

06:30 Guests and schoolchildren welcomed
07:00 Breakfast and general mission presentation
08:00 Children’s activities begin
08:15 Live transmission from Plesetsk
08:52 Lift-off
09:00 End of live transmission
Interviews and continuation of children’s activities
11:00 End of event

Some ESA centres will open their doors to media representatives for the launch of SSETI (see attached registration form). The ESA TV live broadcast will also be shown at several universities and research centres throughout Europe, where SSETI students will gather to follow the event (see Background Note for Editors).

Media representatives wishing to follow the event at Space Expo, or the rebroadcast transmission at the ESA establishments, are requested to fill in the attached registration form and to fax it back to the place of their choice.