Alexandre Ferreira da Silva, professor at Universidade do Minho (UM) and researcher at the Center for Electromechanical Microsystems (CMEMS), was interviewed by the “90 Segundos de Ciência” (90 seconds of science) podcast, about the CMU Portugal’s Exploratory Research Project “PROMETHEUS” of which resulted the Portugal’s first PocketQube satellite, “Prometheus-1”, launched into space in January 2025.
Led in Portugal by Alexandre and Zachary Manchester at CMU, “Prometheus” was developed at Universidade do Minho in collaboration with Instituto Superior Técnico and Carnegie Mellon University, funded by the New Space Portugal agenda of the Recovery and Resilience Program (PRR). Before its launch, PROMETHEUS-1 and other six satellites were integrated into Alba Orbital’s PocketQube Deployer (‘AlbaPod’) in Glasgow, the world’s first PocketQube factory.
With the aim of bringing space closer to the education and research community, Prometheus became a practical case study helping students learn about all the subsystems that a satellite possesses, as well as the processes necessary to qualify and validate the system for flight and licensing.
Listen to the episode here (in Portuguese).
Other articles featuring Prometheus:
- “Prometheus-1” satellite launched into space
- Prometheus-1 with green light from Anacom to fly into space – CMU Portugal
- In the Media: “Prometheus-1” satellite will be launched in January 2025 – CMU Portugal
- Small Pocketqube Satellite developed under CMU Portugal project PROMETHEUS-1 is ready for Space Launch
- PocketQube – small and low cost cubic satellites that can go into space