The Roscosmos State Corporation announced today the successful testing of a new engine for small satellites – CubeSats. The gas propulsion system, created at OKB Fakel, was tested in orbit as part of the Geoscan-Edelweiss spacecraft.
The propulsion system was developed by the enterprise with the support of the Foundation for Assistance to Innovations specifically for CubeSat 3U satellites, and the control board was created by specialists from Geoscan. It was necessary to check whether such an engine could operate in space flight conditions, and to find out how its activation would affect the orbit of the spacecraft.
The state corporation stated that in the future, gas engines will be used to correct the orbit of CubeSats and deorbit them after the end of their service life.