Poland looks likely to see its first satellite in space very soon, according to reports this week.

The ‘PW-Sat’ is one of nine satellites that will be launched on February 9 as part of a European Space Agency project which aims to test how to pull satellites back out of orbit.

Roughly the size of a Rubik’s Cube, it was built by students at Warsaw’s University of Technology in collaboration with the Space Research Centre.

 “If all goes well, this will be the first Polish satellite to ever be in space,” said Maciej Urbanowicz, one of the students involved with the project.

 “All of them are different sizes, the smallest is about the size of a phone and the largest is as big as a bus.”

Students at the Warsaw University of Technology (Politechnika Warszawska) began the project in 2005 and delivered the satellite to the Netherlands in October 2011. The European Space Agency chose to launch PW-Sat alongside several other CubeSats aboard the continent’s new small-size rocket, Vega. Although Polish scientists have been longstanding contributors to space technology, a full satellite has never been built in Poland before.

Do następnego razu… (Till next time…)