ESTCube-1 Photos

ESTCube-1 Photos

Images taken with the first Estonian satellite ESTCube-1 from 2013 to 2015.
Still one of the most beautiful photos captured with a 1U CubeSat.

300 full size images downlinked in total.
About 180 photos are on this website.
About 80 images are still to be processed.
36 dark frames taken for radiation effects.
Dates and times are in local EET/EEST.

Videos

Made from 4 ESTCube-1 images taken in sequence. Animated by Henri Kuuste.

Stories

The First

The first full image of Tunisia and Mediterranean Sea taken with ESTCube-1 on 15th May 2013 at 13:12:26. This was about a week after launch during commissioning of the spacecraft. Later as we gained more experience the quality of photos also improved.

Hidden Estonia

The first photo with Estonia, which we only realized later. Can you find it? Hint: It's under the clouds and quite small. Also includes Scandinavia, Finland and the Baltics. 2013.08.16 12:32:05

Incomplete Beauty

Download of this beautiful photo was cut short because of a power system reset. At the time we could only store images in volatile memory and there was always risk of losing them due to random resets. This was later improved by a software update. Brazil, French Guiana, Suriname. 2013.10.04 17:01:19

Collages

Corsica, Sardinia, Tunisia, Mallorca, Spain, Morocco and Algeria

2013.08.12 13:49.23 & 2013.08.31 13:53:57

Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Tanzania and Congo

2013.11.13 10:43:32

Estonia, Latvia, Finland, Sweden, Lithuania, Russia and Denmark

2014.04.28 13:01:37

Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania and Mali

2013.11.27 12:47:34

Yemen, Somalia and Saudi Arabia

2013.12.04 09:55:28

Mauritania, Senegal and Gambia

2013.12.28 14:08:35

Mali, Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau and Guinea

2014.01.02 13:26:54

Red Sea, Yemen, Djibouti, Eritrea, Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia

2014.01.18 10:13:36

Somalia and Ethiopia

2014.02.02 09:48:44

India (Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra)

2014.02.05 07:59:50

Egypt, Sudan, Libya and Chad

2014.02.08 11:09:18

Mexico and USA (Arizona and California)

2014.03.11 20:24:45

Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia and Poland

2014.04.23 13:44:21

Estonia, Latvia, Finland, Sweden and Lithuania

2014.04.28 13:01:40

Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Hungary, Serbia and Albania

2014.05.06 13:52:49

Malawi, Zambia, Tanzania and Congo

2014.05.11 11:44:55

Angola

2014.05.25 12:19:33

Mozambique, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Swaziland

2014.05.26 11:13:24

USA (California)

2015.03.15 21:27:12

Collection

Mission was to develop the first satellite of Estonia and demonstrate technologies for the electric solar wind sail (E-sail). Read more www.estcube.eu.

1U CubeSat or 1.05 kg nanosatellite.
Launched on May 7th 2013.
Operational for 2 years and 12 days.
All subsystems completely self-developed.
Downlinking 1 image took most of a day.
Process of image taking: 1) power camera, 2) set filter to discard photos with no Earth, 3) set color balance and shutter speed depending on desert or ice or forest, 4) set timer to take images in the desired location, 5) check small sections of images, 6) download selected full images.

ESTCube-1
CubeSat

Developed largely by Henri Kuuste during a bachelor thesis. Read more "Imaging system for nanosatellite proximity operations".

Resolution 640 × 480 pixels.
Uncompressed 10-bit images.
Each raw image was 384 KB.
Storage space only for 4 images.
1 pixel is about 800 meters on ground.

ESTCube-1
Camera