The cubesat-sized CELESTA (CERN Latchup Experiment STudent sAtellite) is set to launch on Wednesday (July 13) aboard the Vega-C, a new European ridesharing rocket. Blastoff is expected at 7:13 a.m. EDT (1213 GMT or 8:13 a.m. local time at the launch site in French Guiana), according to the European Space Agency.
The satellite will travel to the core of the inner Van Allen radiation belt, a region of magnetically confined particles revolving around our globe, perched atop four stacked stages on the launcher.
According to the project website, CELESTA aims to study the effects of radiation on electronics in this area of high-energy particles in a practical manner.
Soon after the Large Hadron Collider was restarted in April after a three-year hiatus for upgrades, CERN (the European Council for Nuclear Research) will extend its current radiation and fundamental physics work into space.
Since the satellite will launch a radiation detector that has previously been tested in the harsh environment of the particle accelerator, there is a close connection between the LHC and CELESTA.
In a press statement announcing the satellite's testing in November 2018, CERN authorities mentioned a system known as RadMon that tracks radiation levels in the LHC.
"By using RadMon sensors to measure radiation levels in low-Earth orbit, CELESTA will test if RadMon could be used in space missions that are sensitive to radiation, ranging from telecom satellites to navigation and Earth-observation systems," the press release added.
ESA stated in 2019 that Vega-C, the Vega's successor, features a new "small spacecraft mission service" that, in the absence of a larger satellite on the rocket, could carry approximately a dozen small satellites at once inside a fairing.
In 2012, Vega became a member of the launch vehicle family at the European Spaceport in French Guiana. It has proven to have excellent capabilities for flights with single or multiple payloads, equatorial to Sun-synchronous orbits, and orbital to suborbital missions.
According to the CIA, the rocket might someday be used in conjunction with the Space Rider reusable spacecraft, which could launch payloads into orbit and land them on a runway using a robotic space shuttle-like vehicle.
The Laser Relativity Satellite 2 experiment from the Italian space agency (ASI) will be the main payload of this first Vega-C launch (LARES-2). As per ASI, the satellite would try to validate some features of general relativity in spaceflight.
CELESTA and five other cubesats will launch into orbit alongside LARES-2, according to ESA officials. The smaller satellites were all manufactured by European research institutions and universities.
