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 operations are on-going since.

Mission success

The PRETTY mission was successfully completed at the end of 2024 following a post-flight review by ESA. Due to the satellite’s flawless technical performance, a request for mission extension was submitted and granted. In 2025, PRETTY was incorporated into the OPS-SAT initiative and integrated into the OPS-SAT Space Lab under the new name OPS-SAT PRETTY (funded by GSTP).