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CubeSats are becoming more and more capable, and it seems like every month, another CubeSat is launched doing something new and novel. So far, technology demonstration has been one of the primary goals of those missions, though the industry is moving into playing an active role in scientific discovery. However, there are still some hurdles to jump before CubeSats have as many scientific tools at their disposal as larger satellites. That is where the Space Industry Responsive Intelligent Thermal (SpIRIT) CubeSat, the first from the Univeristy of Melbourne\u2019s Space Lab, hopes to make an impact. Late in 2023, it launched with a few novel systems to operate new scientific equipment, and its leaders published a paper a few months ago detailing the progress of its mission so far.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n SpIRIT represents a first not only for the Melbourne Space Lab but also for Australia as a whole. Their space agency was first set up in 2018 and began funding the SpIRIT project in 2020, as the COVID pandemic started making joint development efforts difficult. To contribute to the nation\u2019s overall learning of how to build and control CubeSat, as much equipment as possible was sourced directly from Australian companies, including an ion drive from Neumann Space and a solar panel platform from Inovor Technologies.<\/p>\n However, the most exciting part of the SpIRIT mission was the instruments explicitly designed for it. There were several interesting ones, including HERMES, an X-ray and gamma-ray detector; TheMIS, a thermal management system used to cool HERMES; LORIS, an edge computing system; and Mercury, for use in low-latency communications.<\/p>\n \n