QCOSTARICA – A scientific project with Costa Rican technology is ready to travel to space at the end of November in order to find solutions against the “Panama disease“, one of the most severe threats facing the banana industry worldwide,
The “Proyecto Musa” (Musa Project) a device that will perform a suborbital flight, becoming the second space mission developed in Costa Rica and the first by a private company.
“We are a company made up of young people, mostly women, which is something important to highlight and generate a more diverse and broad knowledge,” said Valeria Dittel Tortós, CEO of Orbital Space Technologies.
The goal is to bring science to the region and to develop space research here, taking advantage of all the opportunities and strengths we have to add value to the industry, she added.
The rocket will take off from the Esrange spaceport in Sweden and will take the research device made entirely in Costa Rica into space, as a result of an agreement between Orbital Space Technologies (OST), the Tecnológico de Costa Rica (TEC), the Central American Association of Aeronautics and Space (ACAE) and a Swedish company.
“Public universities, in addition to generating knowledge, create value that ultimately translates into economic development for the country,” concluded Johan Carvajal from SETEC-Lab.
Proyecto Musa
Phase 1 – November 2022: Suborbital flight. 15 minutes in space and returns to Earth.
The objective is to validate the critical systems of the experiment.
Phase 2 – Date to be defined: Orbital flight to the International Space Station (ISS).
It will spend 14 days on the ISS, during which the behavior of the fungus that causes Panama Disease and its natural antagonist will be analyzed. The samples will be frozen and returned to Earth for further analysis.