OREANDA-NEWS. September 28, 2011. The University of Tartu and IT firm Logica Eesti announced on September 13 an agreement to jointly develop new, improved mission control software for ESTCube-1, an Estonian student satellite to be launched next year, reported the press-centre of University of Tartu.

In a press release, Logica's space project manager Andreas Sisask said that the software currently used by the European Space Agency is obsolete and too costly to use in smaller missions.

"We are pleased that ESTCube has given us the opportunity to develop an alternative solution for its mission software that is technologically modern, user-friendly and reasonably priced, and that can continue to find use in many other missions," he said.

The ESTCube-1 mission, managed by the university-coordinated Estonian Student Satellite project, aims to test equipment that can be used in the development of an electric solar wind sail, a proposed form of spacecraft propulsion.