This is one of the two Israeli satellites that will be launched tomorrow from India along with another 100 tiny satellites. In an interview with the Hidan website, the company's CEO Yossi Yamin says: This is a nano satellite weighing 4.5 kg that will contain everything in a medical laboratory: pipettes, petri dishes, a microscope, a spectrometer. The experiments are already installed inside and each of the users will be able to run their experiment through the smartphone
Tomorrow, Wednesday, two civilian Israeli satellites developed with the support of the Israel Space Agency at the Ministry of Science will be launched. The satellites will be launched on a launcher of the Indian Space Agency which will carry a record number of 102 additional satellites from around the world.
Science Minister Ofir Akunis said on the occasion of the launch, "The launch of a scientific research satellite and an innovative startup satellite, in collaboration with the Ministry of Science, shows the ministry's investment in the future of the State of Israel. A future that will benefit both scientists and entrepreneurs, especially today's young people who are inspired by the growing Israeli space industry."
The Stattrap satellite that Minister Akunis O was referring to is a satellite of the Israeli company SpacePharma, which developed for the first time in the world a nano-satellite and has a laboratory with four experiments that are controlled by an application directly by the researchers. The data from the experiments are sent back to Earth, and the researchers can view them in real time and control them via smartphone. The automatic system integrated in the laboratory makes it possible to change the course of the experiment, to receive data such as radiation, temperature, etc. and to take microscopic pictures.
The satellite, DIDO 2, which weighs about 4.5 kg, will house four experiments that will test the effect of zero gravity conditions on materials, including an experiment by an Israeli researcher. Another launch of the company is planned for the coming year. In the future, the company plans to run no less than 160 experiments at the same time in the running laboratories space.
In an interview with the Hidan website prior to the launch, Yossi Yamin, CEO of Spice Pharma, said: "The company was established in 2013 in Israel, and aims to make the environment of zero gravity accessible to industries, researchers, academia, and also to science majors in schools, including biotechnology, and not to stay within the boundaries of electronics, computer engineering and space sciences.”
We are able to carry out the experiments on different platforms - a component that can be installed on the International Space Station, a plane that performs parabolic flights and allows to reach zero gravity, there is the satellite that we launch and it is possible to use this laboratory inside a vibration system on Earth or even on the table in normal gravity conditions."
"We took a classic laboratory environment with the pipettes, petri dishes, microscope, spectrometers and other sensors and minimized it to the size of a baby's shoebox. We allow the operators of the experiment to run the experiment completely independently of the other experiments."
"Today at the International Space Station it is not possible to conduct remote research. The experimenters fly it to the station in a capsule and then it returns to them. There is a problem because sample crystals are destroyed when they return to Earth's gravity. In the case of the satellite, we cannot return the material and therefore remote laboratory skills will be developed under conditions of zero gravity."
How many satellites are being prepared for launch?
"In addition to the satellite that will be launched from India, already at the beginning of March, the second satellite in the series will be launched from Virginia and a third satellite, which was supposed to be launched using the Falcon 9 launcher of the SPACEX company, has been delayed. As is known, a launcher of this type exploded on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral and with it the Amos 6 satellite that was supposed to be launched two days later also exploded."
"The materials are already inside the laboratory, including enzymes, crystals and types of oils, and all the experiments are controlled remotely by the users without the intervention of Space Pharma or any space agency. On the first satellite there are experiments by an Israeli, German, British customer and a fourth experiment whose source cannot be published, including a drug experiment, emulsion resistance for extending shelf life and special crystals, as well as an experiment with enzymes related to the composition of plaque on the teeth."
"Until today, the experiments were carried out by astronauts who learned the procedure on Earth. The scientists would determine the process, build the equipment, transfer it to NASA so that they would approve uploading it to the space station or to the shuttles when they were there and did not have remote control. One should always remember those who break new ground in pharmaceutical innovation. The medical science is the scientists or researchers and as soon as they don't move the joystick they lose all insight. The astronaut has to survive, train, eat, take care of his safety first and only at the end he concentrates on science and he is not really the researcher or the doctor or the scientist and if the experiment goes wrong it is a waste of time and a lot of money and resources."
"In our case, a researcher at the academy or the start-up companies or even a high school student can hold the joystick, open valves to run embolizations, move the materials through membranes, measure radiation and perform spectrometry measurements."
There is no fear of interference between the experiments?
"We built the satellite using a method that allows autonomy for each cell. Each cell can even be set to a different temperature. The application is also isolated for information security reasons between the customers - the safety of the bits. The liquids are boiled and kept in different reservoirs and no one can harm another's experiment, not even by mistake."
After all, this is a nano satellite, how do you make sure it doesn't become space debris?
Yamin: "We comply with the space laws that we signed, which require, among other things, de-orbiting and burning in the atmosphere of a system at the end of its life. As soon as there is broader legislation on the obligation of companies like us to avoid waste of a certain size, we will comply with the laws. In any case, the satellites themselves have a remote monitoring system so that it is possible to change course in the event of a predicted collision with space debris. Our satellite is the first in the world to receive insurance also for the period the satellite will be in orbit and not just insurance for the launch as was customary until now."
Who are the employees in the company?
About 70% of the company's employees are former satellite operators at Amn - who later studied up to a doctorate - or worked in high-tech companies. The trick is to create the integration between the systems, and a combination of human knowledge and scientific disciplines. They are also PhDs in biology but also understand the limitations of the satellite and its ability to function. Next to them sit the programmers who develop the system engineering and the software, even a WISE-like human-machine interface where any experiment operator can click on the screen and cause actions to be taken on the materials that are in the satellite - heating, mixing, lighting an LED light in space. There is no other company that knows how to do this remotely within a very small and cute." Summarizes right.
