On this day, twenty years ago, ESA’s first small satellite,Proba-1 (Project for On Board Autonomy)...
Today, twenty years on Proba-1, which was intended to survive just two years, is still going strong as an Earth Observation mission and its legacy is already future-proofed into the next decade.
Its two imaging instruments - the Compact High Resolution Imaging Spectrometer and the panchromatic High Resolution Camera - have provided more than 1000 images of more than 1000 sites.
While CubeSats and are more and more common and available these days, Proba 1 was ESA's first venture into small missions.
The mission was developed in just three years - an unheard of feat at the time when missions often took more than 10 years to launch.
Normally, the code to autonomously run parts of the mission, such as the altitude and orbit control system, is written in a specific way.
"Some myths about code generation live on today, but I believe we busted them all 20 years ago," says Vuilleumier.
This automatic software generation has evolved and is commonplace for Proba missions nowadays, but it's still not mainstream for all missions, despite the productivity gain and shorter development times.
Proba-1 also highlights how using COTS parts instead of high grade ones can be far more cost- and time- effective and a true pay off - something that is becoming more and more a part of ESA's strategy to develop and improve new technologies for space.
"We were the first to fly lithium batteries. By then, experts would prognose a 6 months lifetime in space at best. Now, 20 years later, we don't notice any degradation of those batteries. They are 23 years old!" exclaims Vuilleumier.
Commercial parts are often considered to be more risky, or to have less reliability, but the Proba team showed that with proper engineering, their hardware has lived for 20 years now in the harsh environment of space and has demonstrated their worth.