The PHASMA mission: the story so far

Two years ago, in 2023, the Libre Space Foundation embarked on the PHASMA project, participating in the Greek In-Orbit Demonstration (IOD)/ In-Orbit Validation (IOV) CubeSat initiative. The latter is a national program to test and validate new space technologies and applications developed in Greece and supported and managed by the European Space Agency (ESA) ’s Directorate of Connectivity and Secure Communications. PHASMA (the Greek word for spectrum) is a mission designed and developed to focus on spectrum monitoring, radio-frequency interference identification, and better tracking of orbital objects to enhance Space Situational Awareness (SSA).

The Greek National Small Satellite program is executed under the auspices of the Hellenic Ministry of Digital Governance with the support of the General Secretariat of Telecommunications and Posts and the Hellenic Space Centre. It is part of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan ‘Greece 2.0’, which is funded by the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), a core program of the European Union’s NextGenerationEU.

PHASMA: DIRAC and LAMARR

The PHASMA mission comprises two open-source 3U CubeSat platforms (10 cm x 10 cm x 30 cm). The PHASMA-DIRAC CubeSat is named after Paul Dirac, the renowned British theoretical physicist and Nobel Prize winner, regarded as one of the founders of quantum mechanics. The PHASMA-LAMARR is named after Hedy Lamarr, an Austrian-American actress and self-taught inventor, who co-invented and pioneered a frequency-hopping, spread-spectrum technology that became the foundation for modern wireless systems, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS.  

PHASMA: Mission in Progress

PHASMA, designed and developed by the Libre Space Foundation at the LSF’s Headquarters at the Hackerspace.gr in the centre of Athens, Greece, is a mission that adheres to the openness principles all LSF projects follow. The mission itself offers an opportunity for open-source space exploration, despite the use of Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) components; a choice that addresses solely practical constraints (cost, schedule, availability) without overriding the fundamental open-source philosophy of LSF. Thus, the mission ensures that documentation, lessons learned, and software are intentionally made available to the community. With the core scientific goal being to generate and openly share data on the electromagnetic spectrum, supporting knowledge sharing throughout the entire lifecycle of the mission, from concept to assembly and testing, from launch to re-entry.

Below is the timeline of PHASMA’s most significant milestones, detailing the journey from its initial concept to its current status.

And how the mission transitioned from bits…

And pieces…

And interlacing cords…

Into two fully operational open-source 3U CubeSat platforms.

📸: Exolaunch

📸: Exolaunch

• The project kick-off took place in April 2023, hitting all the milestones in due time, with the Intermediate Review presentation on July 23rd 2024. The Intermediate Review is significant for a project because it is a critical, structured milestone that assesses a project’s health mid-stream, progress, budget, and scope alignment. It verifies that there are no risks to mitigate and provides a formal decision on the continuation of the project.
• February to March 2025: The Engineering Qualification Model (EQM) Assembly and integration with Exolaunch’s Test Pod took place at LSF’s headquarters in the centre of Athens, Greece. During the same period, the required functional testing also took place, ensuring that all subsystems work nominally.

The EQM is a fully functional, flight-like unit that must be tested for extreme environmental qualification, including launch vibrations and space temperatures. This extensive testing process on the EQM can prove a system’s robustness and flight readiness, ensuring the final Flight Model (FM) will survive its mission. (See below).

• Start of April 2025: The Engineering Qualification Model (EQM) Environmental test took place at the Institute of Aerospace and Materials Science (IDR/UPM) at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain. The majority of the tests concluded successfully. A minor mechanical issue was identified after the vibration tests; however, the team solved it immediately. This gave valuable insights for the flight model assembly and reaffirms the importance of testing.

• Throughout April to June 2025, the Assembly and integration of both Flight Models took place inside the Clean Room at the LSF HQ, leading to a successful Test Readiness Review on June 24-25, 2025.

• Then, in the first weeks of July 2025, the team found itself again in Madrid. This time, they were there for the Flight Model Environmental testing campaign, again at the Institute of Aerospace and Materials Science (IDR/UPM) at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain.

• After successfully completing the FM Environmental Campaign and the software testing at LSF HQ (Full Functional Testing, Mission Testing, OTA update), the Flight Acceptance Review took place on 25 July 2025, and the team was granted the green light (from ESA) for Delivery and Launch.

• On 29 July 2025, the satellites were delivered to Exolaunch’s premises in Berlin, Germany, for final integration.

📸: Exolaunch

📸: Exolaunch

📸: Exolaunch

📸: Exolaunch

• PHASMA-DIRAC and PHASMA-LAMARR will be flying in space with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 on the Transporter-15 rideshare.

Scope of the mission

The Libre Space Foundation is committed to contributing to maintaining a comprehensive overview of the situation in space, known as Space Situational Awareness (SSA). Acknowledging the essential part SSA plays in space safety and mission success. The PHASMA mission is in perfect alignment with LSF’s commitment to SSA and keeping space safe.

More specifically, the PHASMA mission is tasked with running significant in-orbit experiments. The first set of experiments focuses on observing and analysing the spectrum of terrestrial radio frequency transmissions. The goal is threefold: to quantify global spectrum use, locate potential sources of interference, and detect possible signal transmission violations. The second set of experiments involves monitoring and analysing transmissions from other satellites. This thereby contributes to more rapid and accurate satellite identification and tracking, while combining satellite identification techniques that the organisation already uses. Critically, the mission is to achieve this using the SatNOGS-COMMS transceiver—a versatile telecommunications solution that has achieved Technology Readiness Level 9 (TRL 9) and remains fully open-source.

The Libre Space Manifesto

With every LSF satellite, the Libre Space Manifesto travels to space, either etched on the ballasts or, in this case, on the GNSS PCB board, which is perched on the satellite. PHASMA is no exception.

Acknowledgements

For us at the Libre Space Foundation, the PHASMA mission is not only our return to space after a year and a half, but also our largest project to date. PHASMA marks a significant milestone for us to take great pride in, as this time we will be flying open-source CubeSat platforms with our own TRL-9 satellite communication system. This would not have been possible without the support and guidance of the European Space Agency and funding from the European Union – NextGenerationEU and the Greek National Recovery and Resilience Fund, Greece 2.0. 
We are also grateful to the Exolaunch, SpaceX, ESA, and the Institute of Aerospace and Materials Science (IDR/UPM) teams for their ongoing efforts and close collaboration.

📸: Exolaunch

Lastly, we are deeply grateful to the entire LSF and SatNOGS community, comprising both members and Core contributors, who have worked alongside us and dedicated their valuable time, expertise, and effort to the mission.

Thank you, everyone, for working hard with devotion to help make …outer space accessible to everyone!

See you in space soon!

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Disclaimer: Views expressed herein can in no way be taken to reflect the official opinion of the European Union/European Commission/ESA/ Greek Ministry of Digital Policy, Telecommunications and Media. Views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) only, and the European Union/European Commission/ESA/ Greek Ministry of Digital Policy, Telecommunications and Media cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.