Despite the rich range of knowledge and skills, you are best known to both academics and the general public for your exploration of space technologies. With your colleagues and in cooperation with the company SkyLabs and the European Space Agency (ESA) you already sent two satellites into space and thus put up an eternal monument in space to Slovenia. Can you give us a brief description of how the TRISAT story, that continues and will continue, began, what you have achieved and how this contributes to Slovenia, Maribor and the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and last but not least, what does it mean to you personally.
Regardless of the current populism, space is still an extremely challenging and inaccessible environment and the path to it is associated with many risks, problems as well as substantial financial resources. Our creative journey to the first Slovene space technologies was long and turbulent as well. However, after more than a decade of learning, new insights, new findings, research and development, we have managed to create something that only a few universities in the world have achieved. If we were still learning in the first European Student Moon Orbiter (ESMO) project for the European Space Agency (ESA), we quickly realised that with our innovation, existing knowledge and technological readiness, we can quickly make a technological leap into fully competitive solutions in a global sense. Consequently, the second project for ESA was already a great success, because we were years ahead of other countries with our technological solutions in the field of completely software-defined earth stations. Today, this is one of the key technologies that is used in the management of earth stations.
In 2024, the University of Maribor and the Slovene company SkyLabs signed an Agreement with the European Space Agency on the construction and launch of the TRISAT satellite. The project has had a lot of ups and downs, before it actually saw space in 2020 and created the first breakthrough moment. The second TRISAT-R satellite has not reached such popularity, although, in my opinion, it is much more important and successful, since it saw space in working order in 2022, because we are breaking many technological records with it. Now, the first year has passed of uninterrupted operation of the satellite in the most radiation-demanding space environment, in the medium Earth orbit at an altitude of about 6000 km, where we fly over the Van Allen radiation belts about every hour and a half. Currently, the University of Maribor has signed a Cooperation Agreement with the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) with the purpose of processing measurement data that we regularly acquire from the TRISAT-R satellite. This proves that we are not playing around, as we often hear from envious mouths.
To put it simply, we are breaking technological records in the world’s largest “sandbox” in the global sense, in “space”. If a decade ago we were subject to national scepticism with our ideas, we can now boast that there is no continent without a trace of Slovenian space technology. There may still be a perception that Slovenian space technologies are present or limited to our “Slovenian space sandbox”, however, I can confirm with great pleasure that the products of the Slovenian company SkyLabs are already flying on purely commercial missions. At the same time, I can confirm that SkyLabs has entered into new agreements for the next three years under which it is currently equipping four so-called “mega constellations” of more than 100 satellites (such as: Hermes 54, the Italian-German OHB 24, the American Cripto 16 and the Spanish Deimos 8).
Personally, it is a great honour and pleasure for me to lead a team of Slovenian elite researchers, engineers and students, who, with their curiosity, desire for knowledge, desire to conquer space and tremendous enthusiasm, create such breakthrough moments in which we show the whole world that Slovenians can do this as well. Most of them have been involved for a decade as students, and it has been a great pleasure for me to observe and help shape their scientific and engineering careers. They have become internationally important scientists, engineers and businessmen. Therefore, I am extremely proud of them and grateful for these moments.
Assist. Prof. dr. Iztok Kramberger (PhD)
Head of the Laboratory for Electronic and Information Systems
Assist. Prof. dr. Iztok Kramberger (PhD) is Head of the Laboratory for Electronic and Information Systems at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science of the University of Maribor.
Despite the rich range of knowledge and skills, he is best known to both academics and the general public for his exploration of space technologies. With colleagues and in cooperation with the company SkyLabs and the European Space Agency (ESA) they already sent two satellites into space and thus put up an eternal monument in space to Slovenia.
Have you always known that you wanted to be a researcher, a scientist?
Even as a child, I fell in love with electrical engineering and especially its digital domain. Consequently, I tried to understand the impact of electrical engineering and its placement in the wider environment already in primary and secondary school with various more or less successful research papers. Otherwise, I never thought about this kind of academic career, however, the opportunity at the faculty led me to this field, because I like to work with young people and solve technological challenges.
You are a very popular lecturer. Have you noticed an increased interest among students in researching space and new technologies?
I belong to the generation that experienced the emergence of digital technologies from computers with rubber keys and tape recorders to the mobile abundance and artificial intelligence. So, to a generation that still understands the importance of technological readiness and its digital perfection. Newer generations face completely different socio-technological challenges, where the technological level is becoming more and more hidden. This is a reasonable move by large corporations to bundle technology into a set of solutions and tools with the intention of creating problems at a higher level of practical value for the purpose of charging licence fees. We often hear that we should not get into technological details, but rather use existing tools to solve problems. However, the added value lies precisely in this technological level, which has now been clearly demonstrated by the crisis with semiconductors and the resulting extraordinary investments both in the USA and Europe. Such concealment of the understanding of the technology that drives the entire system, and the resulting mismanagement can quickly become disastrous in the future as it makes us extremely dependent. I am therefore trying to raise our technological readiness and consequently influence the increase of interest in the technological level, be it for purely terrestrial or space applications.
With your projects, you have greatly contributed to the popularization of science both at our university and in general. The Slovenian Science Foundation also awarded you the Prometheus in Science Award for Excellence in Communication for 2020. Do you have a secret recipe, perhaps some advice for the existing and future generations of researchers and scientists?
There is always a tip of the iceberg, but most of it floats below sea level and remains hidden. In these crucial moments, I played my part to the best of my ability, and for that, I am extremely grateful to the entire team and everyone involved.
With its regulations, Slovenia follows the policy of the European Union on open science. We can expect changes in the increased accessibility of both the results and the research data itself, and thus an increase in the transparency and reproducibility of scientific research work. Where do you see the greatest advantages on this path of opening science and thus encouraging a collaborative culture of scientific research?
Speaking personally, this can be a double-edged sword. Our experiences in opening the scientific activity often cause that partners from the richer European countries, because of their ability to raise funds, are also more likely to “summarize” and “commercialize” foreign scientific research achievements. For small countries with a weak capital structure, like Slovenia, this is often a problem. We often hear about the remarkable scientific research achievements in Slovenia, however, the question arises, what the Slovenian community and industry, funding this with their taxes, get from this. It is true that, as in sports, we can be proud of these achievements, however, this should not be our goal, because scientific research work alone is not a sufficient condition for the sustainable development of the country. We must be aware that the results of international cooperation must generate prosperity and in “open science”, we provide the results as a basis for further commercialization to stronger countries. If there is a completed financial cycle in one’s own country, this makes sense regarding promotion, however, if only research is carried out in Slovenia and the cycle ends elsewhere in financial terms, this is “modern feudalism” for me. When speaking about Open Science, we should consider the overall situation and analyse all influences on the future of our society.
When preparing for a new research project, do you think about promoting your project right from the start or when do you develop a strategy for communicating about project activities and which open access channels do you use for this?
When preparing a new project, the possibilities for promotion are analysed at the very outset of the project preparation, in doing so, we look at what we will be able to publish in scientific journals, what in professional media and what in general public media. Due to our “smallness” we often withhold the results of scientific research work in the public and professional media up until the scientific results are properly published, because scientific publications are “much more time consuming” for researchers. General public media (internet, radio, television, etc.) as well as professional media are, compared to international scientific publications, completely “underestimated” when evaluating the work of researchers in Slovenia, which is very erroneous and causes problems in the preparation of the promotional strategy of the projects, since this kind of work is automatically considered to be “pro bono”, however, it achieves a much greater impact compared to scientific publications that are read by only a “few”. On the one hand, we want to increase investments in scientific research work, but we do not appreciate the key steps for public promotion of this work. So why would the public support it at all …
