Mission Control and Ground Station

The Telecommand uplink as well as the downlink of the telemetry and scientific data takes 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 Centre © TU Graz/IKS

Launch

PRETTY was launched successfully on October 8th, 10:36 p.m. GFT (October 9th 2023, 3:36 CEST) on the VV23 VEGA rocket from Kourou/French Guyana. The first contact was established already on the same day and currently the health checks are on-going.