On November 11, 2024 at 8:38 a.m., DLR's MAPHEUS 15 sounding rocket took off from Kiruna, Sweden, for a flight of over 300 km. Full press release of the TUHH can be found here. On board were 6 SpacePatches sensor systems from the Smart Sensors Group, which were developed as part of the ongoing AuRelia and SArES projects. Christopher Büchse played a key role in the project under the name RocketPatch. Many thanks to Dr. Jens Hauslage for enabling this opportunity and kudos to the entire DLR MAPHEUS team.

Missions to the moon and Mars are increasingly attracting the interest of manned space travel. What does this mean for researchers and space travelers? This question was the focus of the latest “Future Lecture” at Hamburg University of Technology. A particular highlight of the event was that TU Hamburg was able to welcome Dr. Markus Braun from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) as a guest speaker.

In the upcoming winter semester WS24, we will again offer interesting courses. The lecture Energieeffizienz in eingebetteten Systemen and two Seminare on the topics of intra-satellite communication using LiFi, and sensors under space conditions. Another interesting course will be Research Based Learning

Every year, the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure e.V. (VDI) and its local district association honor outstanding bachelor's, diploma and master's theses by young engineers in the Hamburg area. Julian Neundorf was awarded 2nd prize for his Master's thesis on “Investigation of the effect of different measurement voltage parameters in the bioimpedance measurement of potatoes”. Congratulations Julian!

Even though the experiments around BEAT were some time ago, things got exciting again last Friday. We received the hardware back from the ISS and subjected it to an initial inspection at DLR Bremen. Thank you again for the great collaboration with your colleagues at DLR Bremen. We are looking forward to the follow-up projects (BEAT and beyond!)

As part of our EduSat teaching project, we recently launched the first series of teaching courses Grundlagen Raumfahrtelektronik. The Hamburger Abendblatt has published an article on this. The long-term goal is to develop and launch a real CubeSat in combination with courses and working groups together with students. The scientific mission will also be developed in an interdisciplinary manner on the TUHH campus.

Yannick Loeck joined the Smart Sensors group the 1st of April (no joke). He will strengthen our research team and will work on the recently started project EduSat. Welcome, Yannick!

The use of smaller, more efficient and cost-effective FPGAs is also becoming increasingly important in the space segment. We therefore feel honored that our proposed payload RISA (Reliability Investigation of Low Power FPGAs for Space Applications) from TUHH's Smart Sensors Group has been selected by Institute of Space Systems at DLR in Bremen to fly on the 6U CubeSat PLUTO. We believe that RISA will make important scientific contributions to the reliable use of low power (LP) FPGAs in space missions over the duration of the DLR PLUTO mission.

Christopher Büchse joined the Smart Sensors group as Doctoral Researcher with the 16th of January. He will strengthen our research team and will work on the recently started DLR research project SArES. Welcome, Christopher!

Thibault Paris (Novespace), Ulf Kulau and Urs-Vito Albrecht (University Bielefeld) at Novespace, Bordeaux, at the preparatory workshop for participation in the DLR parabolic flight campaign. The parabolic flight campaign is part of our currently running AuRelia project.

SArES is making an important contribution to future SCG sensor systems for monitoring the health of astronauts. In particular, SArES research will focus on local data backup and a hardware, firmware and software system tailored to the Artemis mission as a flight-capable system. The SArES project line is funded and administered by German Space Agency at DLR, supported by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (FKZ 50WB2421A)

In the upcoming winter semester WS23, we will again offer interesting courses. The lecture Energieeffizienz in eingebetteten Systemen and two seminars on the topics of intra-satellite communication using LiFi, and sensors under space conditions.

Marek Jahnke joined the Smart Sensors group as Doctoral Researcher with the 16th of August. He will strengthen our research team and will work on the recently started DLR research project SatelLight. Welcome, Marek!

SatelLight project addresses the challenges of internal communications within a satellite. Research is being conducted into how LiFi - data transmission via light - can be used to replace cable harnesses and make communications more secure, robust and reliable . The SatelLight project line is funded and administered by German Space Agency at DLR, supported by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (FKZ 50RP2360B)

AuRelia is a research project dealing with autonomous and reliable scg sensors in challenging environments. In particular, the focus is on operation in radiation environments. The AuRelia project line is funded and administered by German Space Agency at DLR, supported by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (FKZ 50RP2350)

Kazi Mohammad Abidur Rahman joined the Smart Sensors group as Doctoral Researcher with the beginning of August. He will strengthen our research team and will work on the recently started research project AuRelia - Autonomous and Reliable SCG-Sensor System for Human Space Exploration. Welcome, Kazi!

To increase the efficiency os embedded sensor devices, compression of streamed data are of high importance. Our paper Efficient Online Compression for MEMS based BCG Wearable Sensors on ULP FPGA presents a lightweight and efficient online compression for BCG data!

Lucas Bublitz joined the Smart Sensors group as Doctoral Researcher with the beginning of November. He will strengthen our research team in particular regarding low-power processing and, in the upcoming semesters, he will assist in our Master's courses (Energieeffizienz in eingebetteten Systemen und Smart Sensors). Welcome, Lucas!

As Sensor devices are often deployed outdoors, the environmental conditions can get worse. In our paper Analysis of Temperature Effects in Heterogeneous Outdoor Wireless Sensor Networks we investigated this effect.

Nice video about our experiment on ISS NASA Space2Ground. The interesting part within nice pictures and videos on board of the ISS start at min 1.52. There is also a Twitter Post by ESA Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti with more details.

Our publication A Wireless Communication Network with a Ballistocardiography Experiment on the ISS: Scenario, Components and Pre-Flight Demonstration about the setup of Wireless Compose 2 and pre-flight demonstrations has been accepted by the IEEE IEEE Journal of Radio Frequency Identification In addition has Differential BCG Sensor System for Long Term Health Monitoring Experiment on the ISS been accepted by IEEE DCOSS 2022.

Our Paper ns-3-leo - Evaluation Tool for Satellite Swarm Communication Protocols has been accepted by IEEE Access Journal.

Ulf Kulau und Deichtorhallen-Intendant Prof. Dr. Dirk Luckow führen am 27. Januar 2022 durch die Ausstellung TOM SACHS – SPACE PROGRAM: RARE EARTHS. Wir freuen uns sehr über diese Einladung und Möglichkeit.

Kurz vor Weihnachten, am 21.12.2021 sind unsere BCG Sensoren mit SpaceX CRS24 zur ISS aufgebrauchen. Am 10.01.2022 wurde das Kommunikationsnetzwerk für die Übertragung der BCG Daten innerhalb der ISS erfolgreich installiert. Ende Januar erwarten wir die ersten Messdaten von der ISS.

Kurz vor dem Start von Matthias Maurer zur ISS (Sonntag 31.10.2021), wird am Samstag 30.10.2021 um 19:30 bei butenundbinnen ein kurzer Fernsehbeitrag zu unserem BEAT Projekt Wireless Compose 2 ausgestrahlt. Nach aktuellem Stand werden unsere Sensoren im Dezember mit der Cargo-Mission SPX24 zur ISS aufbrechen.

In der Lehrveranstaltung Energieeffizienz in eingebetteten Systemen wird ein umfassender Blick auf die Möglichkeiten zur Erlangung energieeffizienter eingebetteter Systeme vermittelt. Neben der Vorlesung wird eine Übung angeboten, in der die Themen der Vorlesung behandelt werden. Ferner wird es eine praktische Übung geben, bei der "Hands-on" ein Energy-Harvesting System in Kleingruppen implementiert werden soll.

Since October 2021, TUHH now has the Smart Sensors Group, which is headed by Ulf Kulau. The focus is on robust digital signal processing that can be efficiently implemented on embedded sensors. In general, one focus is the use of smart sensors in challenging environmental conditions. Current research is particularly concerned with sensors for space applications in combination with medical sensor technology.