I joined Sky Electronics relatively recently, so I had no idea about the history of the company or its accomplishments but I just have discovered Sky Electronics used to make parts for artificial satellites!
As a person who has a JAXA near my parents’ house, and who buys DVDs of space development documentaries and movies such as Apollo 13, and watches the making of the movie over and over again, I was quite excited to learn about it.
It seems that the parts were used in the CUTE-1.7 + APD satellite launched on February 22, 2006.
I wondered what kind of satellite it was. It is surprisingly small.
It was developed in the laboratory of Tokyo Institute of Technology, and it was a high-tech satellite with various functions built into its small size. It is quite a feat to be selected as a precision coil component that must be assembled in such a small space.
I don’t remember if it was a movie or a documentary about Apollo 13, but when the explosion occurred on the spacecraft, I think it was said something like, “Not only the team involved in the development, but also the supplier who made a single screw had to be contacted”. There are so many people involved in space projects, and CUTE-1.7 + APD must have carried the hopes of countless such people into space….
Our coils are made with care to avoid dust and dirt, but if you look at it on a molecular level, I wonder if the coil that went into space had at least one molecule that was a piece of skin cell of a senior Sky Electronics member attached to it and flew off into space. And maybe it became a shooting star when it re-entered the atmosphere in 2009!
https://www.eoportal.org/satellite-missions/cute-17-apd
