During the second week of July, the ALTAIR team of GTD attended the 2nd Barcelona Techno Week: Course on nanosatellites, which was hosted by the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona. This “bootcamp” not only gave the team an integral overview of the small satellite business, but also allowed them to disseminate ALTAIR and GTD to a wide quorum of the international space sector. ALTAIR is a project – and a consortium, of which GTD is one of its main partners – funded by the EU Horizon 2020 programme, which lays the groundwork for the industrialization of a European airborne and fully autonomous launcher dedicated to sending small satellites (up to 150 kg) to LEO (600 km height). ALTAIR approaches the space transportation business in a radically innovative way, aiming at high launch rates (8 days per campaign, 30 launches per day) by using automated production and streamlined operations. Within GTD, under the supervision of Eduard Diez, the ALTAIR team members Mariona Badenas, Pablo Miralles, Carles Pou, Tigran Sargsyan and David Vallverdú, together with the new additions Gerard Martínez and Jordi Simó, are in the process of designing both the ground segment of the ALTAIR launch system and the avionics of the ALTAIR launch vehicle, as well as the flight tests that shall increase the TRL of ALTAIR’s key technologies. They also cooperate with the other ALTAIR partners to produce a comprehensive feasibility analysis of the whole launch service including a business plan, a technical design and a launch site selection. During the Techno Week, several professionals from all over the world, related to CubeSats and the space sector more broadly, gave specialized lectures on their respective fields of expertise. During these lecture sessions, for example, Dave Evans (Mission Operations Concept Engineer at ESA) discussed satellite operations by analysing the 1912 Titanic tragedy, Joren Rotteveel (CEO and co-founder of ISIS) gave his view on the emerging opportunities of small satellites and Norman Fitz-Coy (University of Florida) gave a masterclass on Attitude Determination and Control Systems. GTD, as one of the industrial lecturers of the Techno Week, gave a disseminative lecture on ALTAIR and participated in a poster session, which caught the eye of many attendees (especially CubeSat designers and manufacturers) for the potential benefits the ALTAIR service can offer them. All in all, Techno Week attendees left with a great impression of ALTAIR, and the ALTAIR team came back to GTD with new and valuable knowledge. And, of course, everyone had a very good time!
