OPS-SAT captures our home in space

OPS-SAT captures the vast blackness of space, alongside the colourful complexity of Earth, with a fragile, ghostly atmosphere protecting one realm from the other. This photo was taken on 16 August 2020 at 6:24 UTC. At this time, OPS-SAT was undergoing ‘payload commissioning’ - when instruments are turned on, tested and calibrated. At the same time, it still managed to capture this beautiful image with its high-definition camera, at an altitude of over 500 km.

A flying laboratory, OPS-SAT is the very first of its kind. With an experimental computer ten times more powerful than any current ESA spacecraft, the 30-cm high cubesat is devoted to demonstrating drastically improved mission control capabilities that will arise when satellites can fly more powerful on-board computers. Find out more about the mission, and how you could apply to use it to test out your experiment in space.