The new space mission by the UPC NanoSat Lab for Earth observation RITA/ 3 Cat-6 successfully launched
Doctoral candidates Guillem Gràcia i Solà and Amadeu Gonga i Siles with the space payload RITA/3Cat-6 at the clean room of the UPC NanoSat Lab.
The payload RITA/³Cat-6 is now in orbit. It has been developed by doctoral students at the UPC NanoSat Lab and integrated into the Arab nanosatellite ALainSat-1. The UPC’s space payload carries instruments to gather data on sea salinity and soil humidity, and to measure vegetation status.
Jan 15, 2025
On Tuesday 14 January, the launch of the Arab nanosatellite ALainSat-1 was successfully completed, with the integrated RITA/3Cat-6 payload, an apparatus designed at the NanoSat Lab by students on the doctoral degree in Signal Theory and Communications and graduates from the Barcelona School of Telecommunications Engineering (ETSETB) of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech (UPC).
As explained by doctoral candidate Adrián Pérez-Portero, mission captain, “RITA/3Cat-6 isn’t a satellite itself but an academic payload for Earth observation, travelling within a unit on board ALainSat-1, a nanosatellite developed by the National Space Science and Technology Center (NSSTC) at the United Arab Emirates University (UAEU).”This nanosatellite was launched into space aboard the Falcon 9/Transporter 12 rocket by SpaceX, from Vandenberg base in California (United States).
Now in orbit, the objective of the UPC NanoSat Lab’s RITA/3Cat-6 mission is to gather data on sea salinity and soil humidity using microwave radiometry, and measure vegetation status using a hyperspectral camera. Additionally, the payload carries a demonstrator for the LoRa standard - a technology enabling long-range wireless communication, applicable to the Internet of Things, for example - a radio frequency interference detector and an S-band communication system for scientific data download. All of them implemented by tens of undergraduate, master’s and doctoral students, supported by faculty.
Winner of the second IEEE GRSS Student Grand Challenge in 2019
In 2019, this mission was the winner of the second IEEE GRSS Student Grand Challenge, a competition driven by the Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS) to engage young students and professionals in solving complex engineering problems. Five years later, in March 2024, Adrián Pérez-Portero and the young researchers Amadeu Gonga i Siles and Guillem Gràcia i Solà (all three engineers graduated from the UPC’s ETSETB) travelled to the NSSTC facilities in Al-Ain to complete the integration of the RITA/3Cat-6 payload aboard the ALainSat-1 nanosatellite. In January 2025, the project reached space.
The data obtained by RITA/3Cat-6 will be transmitted by ALainSat-1 and collected by the UPC’s young researchers at the Montsec satellite tracking station (Lleida), among other stations. This infrastructure was conceived and installed by the UPC NanoSat Lab in collaboration with the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC).
Members of the 3Cat series
According to Pérez-Portero, “this is considered the UPC NanoSat Lab’s sixth mission within the series of small satellites and payloads 3Cat, which have flown into space with missions entirely developed by students and faculty in this laboratory.” Led by professor Adriano Camps and located on the UPC’s North Diagonal Campus, the UPC NanoSat Lab is linked to the ETSETB, the CommSensLab-UPC specific research centre and the University’s Department of Signal Theory and Communications.
