CubeSats to Andøya Space
Ixys deliver CubeSats for the GHOST project
Ixys has designed, developed and manufactured five CubeSats to Andøya Space. The CubeSats are part of the international GHOST project, led by NASA and Andøya Space. GHOST is a suborbital rocket that will be launched towards the end of 2025, and the project includes student experiments from Norway and the US.
Norwegian contributors
The Norwegian contributions include experiments from the Space Technology Program at Andøy Videregående Skole, UiT Narvik and the student organization Lyra at the University of Oslo, all of which use CubeSats supplied by Ixys.
Locally made CubeSats
The satellites are developed, designed and manufactured at our premises at Bryne, in Norway. The CubeSats are equipped with battery packs, circuit boards for sensor connections, and radio transmitters for data transmission from space. The available sensor interfaces are I2C, SPI, UART and CANBUS.
The CubeSats, which weigh 0.5 kg and measure 113.5x100x100 mm, will be launched onboard the GHOST rocket from Andøya and ejected from their CubeSat Eject Pod after reaching space. Students will have the opportunity to test their own modifications and sensors in near-space environment, with a flight time of about six minutes and at an altitude of approximately 260 km. The antennas are tied together with a thread that is cut using electricity. The four spring steel antennas will unfold when the satellite is released from the eject pod. Ixys have also built and delivered the ground stations which receives data from the CubeSats over UHF band.
Previous successful student projects
GHOST is part of the extensive Grand Challenge Initiative M/LT collaboration and builds on the success of previous student projects such as G-CHASER. This project strengthens our position as a leading Norwegian technology developer in space and research satellites.
Norway’s main contribution to this project is the launch at Andøya and the “CubeSat eject”, a module that launches the cube satellites.
Participating institutions in the GHOST project:
Space Technology Program at Andøy High School
UiT campus Narvik (Arctic University of Norway)
Student organization Lyra at UiO (University of Oslo)
Clemson University, USA
University of Kentucky, USA
University of Puerto Rico, USA
West Virginia University, USA
