Travelling to an altitude of 100km, the light-spectrometer free falling probe was released to descend back to Earth to monitor and record the light frequencies of elements to help create a density map of element types against differing altitude levels.
Dr William Crofts, Director of Warwick Satellite Programme at the University of Warwick, said: "The launch was almost on time, the nose-cone deployed exactly on time, the satellite ejected, the comms system powered up, and we received data signals at our ground station."
Crofts added: "This is the first time that data has been successfully transmitted and received from an ESA/Rexus launched unit on re-entry. We have a lot of data to be analysed, and we are hoping to estimate the speed of the satellite via the Doppler shift of the radio signals."
Both Harwin, that supplied high-reliability connectors in the satellite, and RS, that provided components for the communications systems, congratulated the project team. The success of WUSat-2 will help the team to meet their ultimate objective, a full orbital launch for WUSat-3 from the International Space Station.
