Kuwait’s first satellite is on track for mid-2021 launch

Orbital Space has announced today that its CubeSat QMR-KWT, is in the process of being tested. These tests verify the satellites ability to perform all tasks as expected, including power management, attitude determination & control, communications, and error recovery.  During functional testing, a hardware-in-the-loop simulation was carried out to emulate in-orbit conditions both virtually and physically.  QMR-KWT is a 1U CubeSat and will be Kuwait’s first Satellite.

“QMR-KWT space mission is to empower students to contribute to the advancement of satellite communication technology, and to prepare them as future professionals to operate the next generation of communication satellites,” said Nada Alshammari, Director of Educational Programmes at Orbital Space. “Orbital Space is undertaking this pioneering mission in order to create educational opportunities for students from around the world to learn more about satellite communications. We are already seeing engagement from students with our QMR-KWT educational program ‘Code in Space’” added Nada Alshammari. “Code in Space is an opportunity for students to develop and test new software solutions by writing software code to be uploaded and executed on the satellite’s onboard computer. We are currently accepting student proposals for this out of the world opportunity.”

“Our goal is to make space accessible to all, and we are excited and honoured to be working with our partner, Endurosat, in achieving this” said Bassam Alfeeli, Founder and General Manager of Orbital Space. He added, “QMR-KWT’s functional testing is being done at EnduroSat facilities and in the coming months it will be integrated with Momentus Vigoride spacecraft as part of the plan to put it in orbit.”

“EnduroSat is a leading company in CubeSat technology and we are thrilled to see our technology enabling more people to access space. We value our partnership with Orbital Space and we hope, together, to democratize space around the world,” said Raycho Raychev, Founder and CEO of EnduroSat.

“QMR-KWT completed its space qualification tests in September 2020 at CIRA – Italian Aerospace Research Centre. We will continue to do functional testing until it is time to hand over QMR-KWT to Momentus,” added Victor Danchev, Mission Manager at EnduroSat.

Mikhail Kokorich, CEO of Momentus added: “Momentus is the first to provide commercially affordable in-space last-mile shuttle services. We are excited to have our technology deliver Kuwait’s first satellite to it final orbit. QMR-KWT will launch from the United States in June 2021 on the second Vigoride demo mission onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.”