The International Federation of Astronautics and Glavkosmos Launch Services in 2019 held an exclusive competition for a free 1U CubeSat launch as part of the first commercial launch. The selection of applicants from among the participants in the competition started in April 2019. The best entry was selected from the IAF member organizations. The spacecraft will be launched using the Soyuz-2.1a launch vehicle and the Fregat upper stage.
The main goal of the competition is to support initiative space projects of young student university teams from different countries. In October 2019, during the International Astronautics Congress in Washington, Glavkosmos, Launch Services and the International Federation of Astronautics announced the winner of the competition. It was the University of Rome La Sapienza, whose students presented the SIMBA project – “A system for improving the monitoring of the behavior of wild animals”.
The WildTrackCube-SIMBA spacecraft has already been delivered to the Baikonur cosmodrome, where preparations for the launch of the Soyuz-2 launch vehicle are underway. It will track the behavior of the animals of Kenya National Park in their natural habitat. Animals (from birds to large mammals) will be equipped with sensors to transmit information about their migration through the apparatus.
Another spacecraft – GRBAlpha of the University of Kosice, which participated in the IAF competition – will also be launched into space as part of this launch. It in turn is intended to demonstrate detector technology and electronics for the future CAMELOT mission (“Cubsats Used to Measure and Locate Transient Processes”), a planned constellation of nanosatellites providing all-sky coverage with high sensitivity and localization accuracy after detecting gamma rays. The faculty of the Konkoli Observatory, the Slovak University of Technology, the Slovak Organization for Space Activities, Eotvos University (Hungary), Hiroshima University (Japan) and Nagoya University (Japan) took part in its creation.
Soyuz-2 launch vehicles are distinguished by their high reliability, versatility and environmental friendliness. The rocket is known all over the world, it is known for its flight history, its use in solving many problems, among which a special place is occupied by the delivery of people into space to the International Space Station.