Development of wide-field UV transient exploration satellite PETREL

A micro-satellite for wide-field near-UV transient exploration PETREL is presented. The scientific goal is to detect transient sources, such as GW sources accompanied by EM emission, supernovae, and other unknown phenomena in the UV sky, and to reveal the nature of explosive phenomena in the universe through multimessenger observations. PETREL is equipped with an 80 mm refractor coupled with BI-CMOS detector. A powerful OBC automatically processes the received data and searches for orbital transients. If a transient is detected, an alert is immediately sent over the Globalstar network. A 50 kg class micro-satellite bus system is being developed for this mission. A series of functional tests using simulators have verified that the satellite system can detect transient sources in nearby galaxies as designed.