Ireland’s first satellite Eirsat-1 completes its mission
Ireland’s first satellite, Eirsat-1 has completed its mission orbiting the Earth. The CubeSat, which was built and launched by students and faculty of University College Dublin (UCD), will de-orbit in the next day or two.
Eirsat-1 was launched in 2023, supported by the European Space Agency (ESA) Fly Your Satellite programme funded by the Dept of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment. It carried three onboard payloads for its low-Earth orbit mission which conducted three experiments, managed by students and staff at mission control in UCD.
During the mission, the gamma-ray module (GMOD) detected 10 cosmological gamma-ray bursts and two solar flares, contributing to scientific knowledge and understanding about the universe. The Wave Based Control (WBC) module tested and validated a novel control system for advanced satellite pointing in space. The ENBIO module (EMOD) was a materials testing platform to test the performance of thermal management coatings in low-Earth orbit for the first time. Over the course of the project, the Eirsat-1 team published 24 academic journal and conference papers sharing the results of the research and technological developments.
More than 50 students, mostly postgraduate in Physics & Mechanical and Materials Engineering and some in Computer Science & Mathematics, learned end-to-end space systems skills not previously seen in Irish industry. These included 13 PhD students funded by prestigious Irish Research Council scholarships. In 2024, UCD delivered a new Spacecraft Operations module as part of an MSc in Space Science & Technology, developed by Eirsat-1 lead systems engineer and chief operator Dr David Murphy. The course trained a further 20 students who gained experience operating the satellite in orbit.
The success of the Eirsat-1 project has directly supported the development and funding of more projects and programmes by UCD, including the National Space Subsystems and Payloads Initiative (NSSPI), a programme launched in March 2024 led by UCD’s Dr David McKeown (engineering and WBC academic lead on Eirsat-1), with over €7.9 million in funding from the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment’s Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund. NSSPI is developing next-generation satellite control systems using model-based design and hardware-in-the-loop testing to accelerate innovation in Irish space technology.
Director of the Eirsat-1 project and UCD C-Space, the Centre for Space Research, Professor Lorraine Hanlon said: “Although it’s a sad day for the team, we’re proud that Eirsat-1 has reached the end of its mission having achieved all of its goals. We’re keen to apply what we have learned, building new missions, and collaborating to grow Ireland’s space sector.”
The Research-Ireland funded GIFTS project builds on the success of GMOD and is led by UCD’s Prof Sheila McBreen. It is a 6U CubeSat mission to detect and localise gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) which will improve sky coverage of existing GRB observatories and contribute to the search of electromagnetic counterparts to gravitational-wave events.
In addition, UCD C-Space has been selected by ESA for a follow-on project called COMCUBES, led by Dr David Murphy, that will develop a CubeSat swarm to deliver faster and more detailed information about gamma-ray bursts. Scottish space company AAC Clyde Space has come aboard as partner responsible for system design for the Phase A study.
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