The Odin project partners space organisations and agencies in Sweden, Canada, France and Finland – all ESA member nations. The Swedish Space Corporation (SSC) was responsible for the spacecraft system design and development.

Learn more about the Odin mission in this infographic:

The spacecraft structure is of aluminium honeycomb with carbon-reinforced plastic for the reflector support structure. Odin is three-axis-stabilised. Attitude is sensed by three coarse and two fine sun sensors, three gyros, two star trackers, and two 3-axis magnetometers. The star trackers were initially used in the French Sigma experiment and subsequently used for the HELIOS-A spacecraft (a European military optical reconnaissance satellite project).

The spacecraft employs the body-pointing technique to look into the various directions.

For aeronomy the spacecraft follows the Earth limb, scanning the atmosphere up and down from 15 km to 120 km at a rate of up to 40 scans per orbit. When observing astronomical sources, Odin continuously points towards the object for up to 60 minutes. Both payload sensors point into the same direction.

Sun-synchronous polar with an altitude of 620 km.

The control centre (Odin Control Centre, OCC) was developed under Swedish Space Corporation (SSC) responsibility, at Esrange. There is also a mission centre in Solna near Stockholm.

The OCC processes the Odin products although a French ground segment processes Level 2 SMR aeronomy and level 1 SMR astronomy products.

Learn more about Odin from these websites:

• Odin overview on the SNSA website*
• Odin on the eoPortal*

*The information provided is sourced and updated by external entities. For further details, please consult our Terms and Conditions page.