Young Engineers' Satellite 2
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The Young Engineers' Satellite 2 (YES2) is a 36 kg student-built tether satellite that is part of ESA's Foton-M3 microgravity mission. The launch of the russian Foton-M3 occured on September 142007 at 13:00 (CEST) by a Sojuz-U launcher. The project was carried out by Delta-Utec SRC and supervised by the ESA Education Department and was nearly entirely designed and build by students and young engineers.
The YES2 mission will take place on the 25th of September and will feature the deployment of a 30km long and 0.5mm thin tether in order to release a mini-satellite and re-entry vehicle called Fotino. The experiment will return a small, spherical, lightweight re-entry capsule to demonstrate the SpaceMail concept.
There are three main components of the experiment:
- FLOYD – the YES2 deployment mechanism located on the Foton spacecraft;
- MASS – the Mechanical Acquisition and Support System;
- FOTINO – a small spherical capsule, with a diameter of 40 cm and a mass of 5.5 kg.
During the flight, FLOYD will eject the other two components. There will then be controlled deployment of a 30 km long tether. Orbital dynamics will cause the Fotino capsule to be positioned in front of the mother spacecraft. By bringing the deployment to a halt, a pendulum-like swing will be induced. When the capsule and tether are swinging through the local vertical, the tether will be cut. Since the capsule will then be going too slowly to stay in orbit, it will begin to re-enter the atmosphere from an altitude of about 250 km, protected by a heat shield made of novel materials. Once it reaches an altitude of 5 km, a parachute will deploy to ensure a soft landing on the steppes of Kazakhstan.