UPC. Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya

Two small satellites created at the UPC’s Nanosat Lab have travelled to space from Kourou, French Guiana, on 2 September (at 3.51 a.m. on 3 September Spanish time) to carry out the FSSCat mission, which received the ESA Sentinel Small Satellite (S^3) Challenge award in 2017. The main objective of the mission is to monitor polar ice and soil moisture while testing intersatellite communication systems in order to create a future network of federated satellites. The ɸ-sat-1 technology demonstrator is also on board, it is ESA’s first artificial intelligence in space and it will filter out images of the Earth that are not suitable for use because of cloud cover.