A constellation of minisatellites with input from the University of Nova Gorica and Slovenian companies SkyLabs and Aalta lab has been launched into space to monitor the sky and detect events such as gamma-ray bursts.

The Hermes Pathfinder (High Energy Rapid Modular Ensemble of Satellites) was launched into space at 7.43am EDT from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, US, along with other satellites, as part of Space-X's Transporter 13 mission on a Falcon 9 launch vehicle.

The six miniature CubeSats of the Hermes constellation will be deployed in about a week at an orbit altitude of 500-520 kilometres, releasing one per day, the University of Nova Gorica's Centre for Astrophysics and Cosmology said in a press release.

The Hermes satellites work in triplets and are able to detect and locate random astronomical events in the sky, such as gamma-ray bursts, which are the most powerful known cosmic explosions and can be detected even if they occur in very distant galaxies.

The satellites will continuously monitor almost the entire sky and transmit the coordinates of detected space events to the scientific community on Earth within minutes.

The Hermes mission is innovative because it uses a constellation of small satellites as a platform for scientific experiments.

It will be the first of its kind to lead to new ways of observing space with low-cost satellites. It is a demonstration not only of the potential of modular and scalable small platforms in astronomical research, but also in other scientific fields.

The Italian space agency ASI is covering most of the mission's costs, with the rest covered by the international community. Three of the six satellite units were developed under the Horizon 2020 Hermes-SP project.

The Nova Gorica Centre for Astrophysics and Cosmology contributed expertise on gamma-ray bursts and numerical algorithms for satellite positioning.

Meanwhile, Aalta lab from Solkan developed algorithms and software to quickly and accurately determine the latency of detection signals from satellites in a constellation, which is essential to accurately document the position of a light source in the sky.

SkyLabs from Maribor developed a satellite avionics system that includes an advanced on-board computer, a communication module for receiving telemetry data and transmitting telecommands, a compact communication module for transmitting the captured data, and antennas.