Mexican EMIDSS-6 space module to be tested in NASA mission

MEXICO - The Mexican Space Agency (AEM) informed that the Mexican space module EMIDSS-6 (Experimental Module for Iterative Design for Satellite Subsystems) will be tested in a mission of the United States space agency (NASA) next December.

EMIDSS-6 will contribute to the study of climate change, in order to deepen our knowledge of global warming and increase our understanding of its connection with the increase in frequency and intensity of hydro-meteorological phenomena such as hurricanes, in the face of which it is necessary to reinforce the construction of our capabilities in the region.

AEM is developing in parallel the proof-of-concept device called “AEM-OPTIC-1”, for data acquisition and satellite images of the stratospheric environment for EMIDSS-6, to support experiments to identify pollutants in the atmosphere as micro plastics, including environmental sensors for climatological characterization.

The agency explained that the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN), coordinator of the project, was invited by NASA and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) for this test, with which Mexico will participate in a suborbital mission from Antarctica to the stratosphere for the first time in history.

For its part, NASA will subject EMIDSS-6 to strict technical and electromagnetic compatibility evaluations, so that by the end of the year, the space instrument will be launched from Antarctica to begin recording environmental variables by means of sensors to measure humidity, temperature and ultraviolet radiation.

Mario Alberto Mendoza Bárcenas, researcher at the IPN's Center for Aerospace Development (CDA) and leader of the program, said that the experimental module will take off from the McMurdo Base in the United States, located at the southern tip of Ross Island, near New Zealand, at the South Pole, on NASA's FY25 mission.

The mission team will include experts from the IPN, the Institutes of Applied Sciences and Technology, and Engineering, the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Occidente (ITESO).