We had an extraordinary opportunity to meet with Marsha Ivins, who held an entertaining presentation on December 6, 2012.

The public lecture was about the past, present and uncertain future of human spaceflight.  Marsha S. Ivins is an engineer at Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center and has travelled to space five times as a crew member of Space Shuttles Columbia and Atlantis. She has spent more than 55 days in space during her 1990, 1992, 1994, 1997 and 2001 space travels. She has been to both Mir and the International Space Station. The astronaut – originally an engineer – is going to talk about the past, present and uncertain future of human spaceflight.

Before the presentation the Masat-1 team met her and introduced the story of the satellite development and the achievements we reached.

Masat-1 is the first Hungarian satellite, designed and built by students and lecturers of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics in cooperation with the Hungarian Space Office and various domestic companies. The satellite, measuring 10x10x10 cm and weighting 1 kg, was launched by the Vega launch wehicle of the European Space Agency (ESA). The satellite has been operating flawlessly since the launch of 13 February 2012, steadily transmitting data to the primary ground control station (Budapest University of Technology) and the secondary ground control station (Érd, Hungary). In addition to these domestic control stations,  more than 120 radio amateurs have received the satellite worldwide. Their total contribution to the success of the mission exceeds 200 000 data packets.