Last Wednesday the Flying Laptop satellite had its fourth launch birthday! On the 14th of July 2017 it was launched by a Soyuz Rocket from Baikonur. After only 4 days in orbit the LEOP phase was completed and the first picture was recived on ground. Since then all components have been working smoothly. During the lifetime, the satellite took more than 84000 pictures, mostly of the earth, for vegetation observation, ship detection and mapping of the earth. There were more than 983000 AIS messages received. The optical laser terminal is working with ground stations all over the world from companies like the ESA, NICT, CNES, DLR and KSAT. Therefore the attitude control system went through significant performance upgrades to fulfill the pointing requirements. The initial orbit height decreased by roughly 4 km and in the four years the satellite travelled 944.29 Mio km in 21760 revolutions.
As one of the main goals of the mission, educating students is still the focus of operation and the ground data processing.
With all these achievements we are happy and proud to announce that the mission will be funded for the next two years.