Recently we had a visit from ESA DG Jan Wörner. He gave a talk about space 4.0 and visited a selection of student teams, including PR^3! (Photo: Bart van Overbeeke, https://www.bvof.nl/)
What PR³ Stands For
Payload for Radiation measurement and Radio-interferometry in Rockets
The PR³ team was born in October 2017, with the intention of providing room for bachelor and master students interested in space research.
PR³ stands for open collaboration between universities, and students to gather knowledge in the latest space research. Specially, in the areas of interferometry, and radiation measurement.
PR³ is taking part of the REXUS/BEXUS 2017-2019 launch program.
The team is the result of the close collaboration between Radboud RadioLab in Nijmegen, and the Electronic Systems group at TU/e. The PR3 Team is formed by a panel of experts, and students from both Radboud RadioLab, and TU/e.
The base of the PR³ team is located in Eindhoven, at the TU/e.
One of our ground station locations is in a zone where we could not make any photos towards Esrange … but we could make photos of the view in the other direction, and well … see for yourself!
In the last days of STW we could see REXUS 23 and 24 being assembled in the Dome. Thanks to Dieter Bischoff for the photos! (used with permission)
Last week our team went to Kiruna for the training week and PDR. Training week was very interesting and fun, PDR seemed to be quite positive (still waiting for the official feedback though ).
The Beginning
In the summer of 2017 a group of students at the Eindhoven University of Technology decided to put a theory developed by the Radboud University into practice. At the time, Radboud Radio Lab (RRL) was working on a satellite payload destined to be part of the Chang’e 4 mission. Its objective is to perform radio-interferometry from the far side of the moon (L2) and gather data for research into the history of the universe.
RRL realized however, that a similar technique can also be used to track objects that emit a radio signal, e.g. beacons. Simulations show that for static objects sub-centimeter accuracy can be achieved. The primary objective of PR3 is to adapt, and test, radio-interferometry to track (fast) moving objects, such as REXUS with a very high accuracy.
As the REXUS payload only required three transmitter modules to be on board the experiment was extended to also perform radiation measurement with commercial-of-the-shelf camera sensors. Combined with high-accuracy position and orientation tracking provided by the radio-interferometry experiment an accurate measurement of radiation versus altitude-and-orientation can be made.