IRELAND’S FIRST EVER satellite has been launched into space.

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying EIRSAT-1 lifted off from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California shortly before 7 pm Irish time.

The mission has been in development for the past six years and around 50 UCD students have worked on the project over this period.

It began when UCD applied to become part of the European Space Agency’s “Fly Your Satellite Programme” in 2017.

Dr David McKeown is an Assistant Professor/Lecturer in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at UCD and is the Engineering Manager for the EIRSAT-1.

Before take-off, he told The Journal that there are both nerves and excitement pre-launch and added: “I’m really happy with where we are, we have tested our satellite as much as we can and I think it’s ready to go.”

He explained that the satellite has three “payloads”, or experiments in it.

It has a Gamma-ray burst detector – Gamma-ray bursts occur during the death of massive stars and are detected here from galaxies that may be billions of light-years away.

McKeown said it’s also “got some thermal coatings and this experiment will test how well they perform in space”.

It’s also got an “algorithm that allows us to reorientate the satellite’s position and move it around in space”.

“So we’re testing three new Irish payloads out for the first time there,” said McKeown.

A ground station has been built in UCD and McKeown said this will allow them to “communicate with the satellite and get the data back from those experiments and analyse it”.

A poem called ‘All Ways Home’ is also engraved on the outer cover of the antenna module, in a formation like a spiral galaxy.

It was written by 12 Irish school children working as part of a collaborative project across Ireland.

Lorraine Hanlon is the Director of UCD’s Centre for Space Research and the Endorsing Professor for EIRSAT-1.

She explained to The Journal that there will be two times during the day, in the morning and the evening, when the spacecraft will be passing over Dublin.

“We have short windows of time every day, in total about 30 minutes, when we’ll be able to communicate with the spacecraft,” said Hanlon.

While it took six years to get to this point, there is a sense in which the real work begins today.

Meanwhile, both McKeown and Hanlon hope that EIRSAT-1 can cement Ireland’s position as a player in space.

“You have this new industry in space where small countries like Ireland, Scotland, and Belgium can have companies and universities starting off and then branching out and becoming very successful very quickly,” said McKeown.

He added: “There’s a low cost of entry to space, where before you would need very large, expensive satellites.

“The miniaturization of technology allows you to do more for less, which allows players like Ireland to get involved.

“One of the big parts of EIRSAT-1 is educating students so they can go out and work on more research projects and build up our space industry here in Ireland.”

Hanlon adds that “We’ve been doing space for a very long time in Ireland”.

She told The Journal: “We’re one of the earliest members of the European Space Agency, but this is definitely a first in terms of the full Systems Engineering.

“All of the design has been done in UCD, every piece of the spacecraft has been designed built, and tested in UCD.