“I’m amazed by the quality of the result, because this was basically the first time we turned on the software, since reaching orbit,” explains Andreas Dielacher of Beyond Gravity, who developed the signal processing core PRETTY uses. “Overall ground truth for this instrument is very limited; it’s not so long ago we made a field test campaign where we were pointing an antenna over a bridge in Vienna to measure the height of the Danube River. While our calculations and simulations predicted all would go well, unpredictable things can happen in space. But, with these first results, I’m left really impressed by the instrument’s performance.”

At just 34 x 10 x 10 cm in size, the PRETTY, Passive REflecTometry and dosimeTrY, mission is a ‘3-unit’ CubeSat – a low-cost, standardised type of small satellite built up from 10 cm boxes. Funded through ESA’s General Support Technology Programme by Austria, PRETTY has been developed by an all-Austrian consortium, with Beyond Gravity Austria as prime contractor developing the reflectometry payload, Seibersdorf Laboratories contributing a radiation dosimeter payload and Technical University of Graz serving as overall system integrator and operator.