For the first time, – the Swiss Academic Space Initiative – has sent hardware into orbit with ALICE. Launched on the 15th of March with SpaceX transporter 13, ALICE is a technology demonstrator testing a novel electronics system for the upcoming SAGE CubeSat. The mission ensures ALICE’s reliability before it is integrated into the complete CubeSat. ALICE is completely designed by students and assesses if its components can withstand the harsh space environment. Simultaneously, an innovative redundancy system designed by ETH is launched as ALICE’s secondary payload.

ALICE is SAGE’s on-board computer, the brain of the satellite. The SAGE CubeSat will feature a fully automated laboratory to study how human cells age differently in the microgravity of low earth orbit. Understanding how the human body is impacted by the decrease of gravity is essential for future long-duration missions, such as a mission to Mars.

Originally developed as a thesis for SAGE, ALICE was adapted for space use within just two months. This rapid transition from research to a real-world application demonstrates how students at ARIS can bring space innovations to life. The mission also provides young engineers with hands-on experience working on an actual spaceflight project.

ALICE also carries a special microchip: the Trikarenos Chip, developed by Michael Rogenmoser at the Integrated Systems Laboratory (IIS) of ETH Zurich. This chip features triple redundancy, meaning it can continue functioning even if part of the chip fails. In space, where repairs are impossible, this is a crucial advantage. Trikarenos has such a high level of redundancy while maintaining extremely low power consumption, another essential characteristic for space applications. ARIS is proud to collaborate with ETH and carry IIS’ chip to orbit.

The mission is supported by DPHI Space, which is hosting ALICE on its payload container Clustergate-1. DPHI Space is enabling ARIS to test crucial parts of the satellite in space by lowering the barriers to space access. Launching technologies like ALICE as hosted payloads de-risks the final project, so that when SAGE launches, most of the technology will be flight proven.

With ALICE now in orbit, ARIS is already looking ahead to future missions, leveraging this experience to further develop Swiss student-led space technology.

“This launch marks a major milestone for our team. Just six months ago, ALICE was in our hands and now it is in space, which is incredible – getting this chance as a student is truly special. The data and insights we gather from our experience with ALICE are invaluable for the SAGE CubeSat Mission, helping us refine our technology and bringing us one step closer to our final goal – the launch of the CubeSat.”, says Fiona Konnerth, Project Manager at SAGE. “Seeing hardware and code we developed now flying in orbit is an amazing achievement for the entire team.”

“It is very inspiring to see all the hard work done in this short two-month period finally pay off. ALICE is a huge change of perspective after three years of mainly theoretical design studies. This mission will strengthen our confidence in the risk mitigation techniques applied to our hardware for such a challenging environment as space.” – Kai Berszin, SAGE System Engineer

“Given the tight timeline, developing the software for this demonstrator was a challenging task. The On Board Computer (OBC) team worked with a very hands-on approach, developing and testing the flight software iteratively. A fully automated control and test system was implemented, allowing for very flexible software updates in orbit.” – Gianluca Ielpo, Team Lead SAGE OBC