First Guatemalan satellite deployed from the ISS

Quetzal-1 CubeSat – Credit Universidad del Valle de Guatemala

Guatemala’s first satellite, a small CubeSat called QUETZAL-1, was deployed from the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday, April 28, 2020.

Its primary mission is to test a sensor for remote data acquisition for natural resource management, which could be used to monitor water quality in inland water bodies.

The satellite is part of the Japanese Kibo cubesat program, a product of the cooperation between, among others, the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), Universidad del Valle de Guatemala (UVG), and more institutions. The operational frequencies were chosen through cooperation from Guatemalan radio amateurs and the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU).