Proyecto Irazú has left the planet!

[Sam Wilson]

As many of you may already know, Costa Rica's first, and Central America's only, satellite finally was launched aboard the SpaceX CRS-14 Falcon 9 mission on Monday, April 2nd.  The Irazú Project, as it is called, is a 10 cm cube satellite, a U-class spacecraft built to the CubeSat spec:  10x10x10 cm, up to 1.33 kg mass.  The scientific effort will be used to monitor tree growth establishing the carbon fixation rate of Costa Rican forests.  Measuring devices (dendrometers) have been fixed to trees on a plantation in Los Chiles, Alajuela (up by Nicaragua) and the data will be captured by the monitoring station in the Costa Rica Technology Institute (ITCR) in Cartago.  The final $75,000 USD need for the project was raised during a successful kickstarter campaign.

The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft carried the Irazú Project to the International Space Staton where the Japanese Kibo Laboratory took charge of it on Wednesday and will launch the satellite into its 400 km orbit.  The satellite is expected to stay in orbit about 6 months or so.

Here's a nice technical detail page describing the project:  IRAZU CubeSat Mission.  And the project page over at TEC:  PROYECTO IRAZÚ

Both the Falcon 9 rocket and the Dragon spacecraft were reflown this launch -- each had previously flown a mission and landed safely to be prepped for another mission.  SpaceX is really kicking it in gear with their reusable rockets and spacecraft.

The full SpaceX launch video is here:  Launch of SpaceX Falcon 9 with Dragon CRS-14 Mission.  If you get impatient watching the video, skip to 31:55 for T-10 seconds.  I love watching these SpaceX launches!

Go Ticos!  Go!

--

Sam

[Sam Wilson]

LiCR,

 

Has anyone seen or heard of any updates on Proyecto Irazú?

     El satélite tico será enviado al espacio en un Falcon 9

The launch on April 2nd was successful, it was supposed to take 2 days for the Dragon spacecraft carrying our little Tico satellite to catch up with the ISS, and I never heard how long before the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) who were to accept it in their ISS module, the Kibo Lab, and then later toss it into orbit.  The last thing I found from JAXA was that the satellite had officially been handed over to the Japanese by the Costa Rican ambassador to Japan, Ambassador Laura María Esquivel-Mora on February 21st so it could be packed in the Japanese container for transport on the SpaceX CRS-14 Falcon 9 Dragon mission to resupply the International Space Station. etc.  The ambassador is the one in yellow on the left:

Like a lot of things it seems...  lots of fanfare on the lift-off and then nothing about the real nuts and bolts of the daily life and ongoings of the project!

Here's another nice video talking about the project ahead of time:

Irazú Project The First Satellite Made in Costa Rica

Please let us know if anyone finds any updates on this historic mission.  I wish the local press would make a big deal about this to get more of the young'uns interested in STEM.  That is one of my big missions with my 6 and 7 year old Ticos in my household....

Thanks,

--

Sam