Ntnu Smallsat Lab

NTNU SmallSat Lab hosts a variety of space-related projects at NTNU. The first satellite, HYPSO-1, was launched on the Transporter-3 mission in January 2022, with HYPSO-2 following in August 2024. The two satellites serve as a platform for remote sensing technologies, including instrumentation and the development of new methods for data processing, both on-board and on the ground. The "Hyperspectral Small satellite for Oceanographic observation"(HYPSO)-mission observes oceanographic phenomena with small satellites with a hyperspectral camera onboard. Motivations for employing this approach: Oceanographic phenomena are of great interest to understand more about the effects of climate change and human impact on the world. Traditional Earth-Observation satellites are very expensive and take several years to develop and launch. Dedicated small satellites can be used to provide high spatial resolution within a small field of view to areas of interest with short revisit times. The information from these images can be downloaded and communicated to unmanned aerial and underwater vehicles which can then investigate the areas of interest further using the data from the small satellite. Each year, a team of approximately 30 students, led by several PhD candidates, postdocs, researchers, and professors, is working on this mission. The team changes every year, so over 100 students have worked on the missions since 2017. The team is multidisciplinary, consisting of students from several departments at Mechanical Engineering, and from Department of Electronic Systems and Department of Engineering Cybernetics.