NPU’s Delegates Attend the 4th European CubeSat Symposium in Belgium

NPU News Network----Dr. Zhao Bin and Dr. Li Xin, both of whom are from NPU’s School of Astronautics and SElM (Shaanxi Engineering Laboratory for Microsatellite), attended the 4th European CubeSat Symposium and QB50 3rd Workshop from January 28 to February 5 in Brussels Belgium. At the symposium,they delivered a report entitled “Attitude Control System Design of CubeSat” toabout 200 participants who are scholars in satellite, college teachers or students. The conference discussed the current development state of CubeSat and its future trend. The sponsor gave a detailed presentation on the progress of QB50 and held in-depth exchange with the participants.

Through the network composed of 50 cubesats, QB50 conducted multi-point measurement in orbit at low atmospheric layer which has been little explored by mankind, meanwhile carrying out the research on satellite’s reentry into the atmosphere. NPU, as one of the major initiators,submitted relevant scheme in October of 2010 to the Seventh Frame Agreement Subordinate to European Commission, together with some well known research institutes like Netherlands’ Delft University of Technology, the UK’s Surrey University Space Center, the Space Center in Swiss Federal Institute ofTechnology in Lausanne, Germany Leibniz Atmospheric Physics Research Institute,and Stanford University. Until January 16, 2012, 91 universities and research institutes worldwide had applied for participation in related project. By 2014, 50 cubesats will have achieved carrying launch. In our country, 11 universities have applied for the participation in the project, including Northwestern Polytechnical University, Peking University, Zhejiang University, National University of Defense Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology, Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Shanghai Jiaotong University,Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Macau University of Scienceand Technology, Taiwan National Cheng Kung University. NPU is the only general coordination unit in Asia.