Mission Control and Ground Station

The Telecommand uplink as well as the downlink of the telemetry and scientific data took place via a ground station built at the institute. In addition to the antenna tower, a mission control centre was set up to ease the challenges that arise when communicating with the satellite and during tracking.

Mission Control © TU Graz/IKS

Launch

PSLV-C20 during lift-off © ISRO

The satellite was launched on February 25, 2013 as a secondary payload from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota/India. BRITE-Austria/TUGSAT-1, along with 6 other satellites (including sister satellite UniBRITE), was launched into a sun-synchronous dawn-dusk orbit aboard the ISRO's PSLV-C20 (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) rocket.

A video of the start can be found under the following link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z18sJ3RJ8OQ

Mission success

Originally designed for a two-year mission, BRITE-Austria/TUGSAT-1 delivered high-quality scientific data until 2022, followed by valuable telemetry and health data from its onboard systems. In early 2025, the BRITE-Austria mission was officially declared successfully completed, and decommissioning procedures were initiated.