Science
SWISSCUBE
Swiss Student CubeSat (Airglow Research) · EPFL (Switzerland)
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SwissCube, Switzerland's first satellite and one of the most celebrated student-built CubeSats in spaceflight history. Designed and constructed entirely by students at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), the 1 kg spacecraft launched in 2009 to study airglow — the faint natural luminescence in Earth's upper atmosphere — using a compact onboard camera and spectrometer. Remarkably, SwissCube remains operational and is still transmitting data more than 15 years after launch, far outliving its planned mission and becoming a point of enduring national pride for Swiss space engineering.
Its orbit
- Orbit
- Low Earth Orbitcan appear as a fast-moving star at dawn or dusk
- Altitude
- 426–430 mi (685–693 km)
- Inclination
- 98.4°
- One orbit
- 98.4 minutes14.6 orbits a day
- NORAD ID
- 35932
- Int’l designator
- 2009-051B
- Launched
- 2009
Orbital elements from CelesTrak, as of 22 Sep 2026.
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