The second Romanian satellite build by pupils will be launched into space in November, RomSpace team announced in a release sent to AGERPRES on Wednesday.
ROM-3 is a pocketqube, with a side measuring five centimeters and its mission is to test Internet of Things (IOT) applications in outer space.
"Initially, ROM-3 was supposed to fly with Vega European rocket, but, after the explosion in December 2022 of Vega-C rocket, the Arianespace company blocked all flight programmes for indefinite time. Under these circumstances, the RomSpace team managed to get a spot on one of the SpaceX flights at end-2023. If there are no new delays, Romania will have two satellites on orbit by the end of 2023," the release said.
The first Romanian pocketqube, namely ROM-2, the big brother of ROM-3, has the launching scheduled for May 2023 and will fly with a Falcon 9 rocket from SpaceX.
"The Romanian Orbital Mission programmes (ROM-2 and ROM-3) have no connection to the Romanian Space Agency (ROSA) or with the other state institutions in the aerospace area," the release mentions.
The RomSpace team is made up of pupils of the International Computer High School of Bucharest (ICHB).