Ireland’s inaugural satellite, designed and built entirely by University College Dublin students, has successfully completed its groundbreaking Earth-orbiting mission and will de-orbit within days.
EIRSAT-1, a shoebox-sized CubeSat launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base in December 2023, achieved all its scientific objectives during its operational period.
The satellite’s most significant accomplishment was detecting 12 cosmic events, including 10 gamma-ray bursts from distant galaxies and two solar flares. Gamma-ray bursts occur during massive star deaths and can be detected from galaxies billions of light-years away, making them among the universe’s most powerful phenomena.
The mission generated substantial academic output, with the EIRSAT-1 team publishing 24 research papers in journals and conferences, documenting technological developments and scientific discoveries.
Professor Lorraine Hanlon, Director of UCD’s Centre for Space Research, described the mission’s end as “a sad day for the team” while expressing pride that “EIRSAT-1 has reached the end of its mission having achieved all of its goals.”
Dr Padraig Doolan from Enterprise Ireland’s European Space Agency delegation hailed the mission as a milestone for Ireland’s space sector, demonstrating how Ireland “not only participates, but also leads complex space missions from design through to operations.”
Over 50 students, primarily postgraduates in Physics, Engineering, Computer Science and Mathematics, developed space systems skills previously unseen in Irish industry through this project.
UCD has already secured follow-on work, with the European Space Agency selecting UCD C-Space for COMCUBES, a project developing CubeSat swarms for enhanced gamma-ray burst detection.