AcubeSAT is a multidisciplinary project by SpaceDot, a team led by ambitious students and researchers primarily from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. The space mission is realized with the support of the European Space Agency (ESA) Education Office. The team is one of the three accepted in the “Fly Your Satellite!”* European Space Agency programme. In this application story we take a look at how Dino-Lite Microscopes are integrated in a SpaceDot nanosatellite.

The nanosatellite currently designed by SpaceDot satellite is approximately 34 cm in size and is expected to go into orbit in 2024! The satellite will have an in-house built pressurized vessel containing a miniaturized imaging system, a culturing platform and a lab-on-a-chip, able to sustain yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae growth, in order to probe the effects of radiation and microgravity conditions in low Earth orbit. The interdisciplinary nature and inherent complexity of the design, as dictated by the mission goals, demand rapid and flexible prototyping. The AM4515T4-GFBW is routinely used by the team in a variety of workflows meant for characterization and verification of the infrastructure hosting the biology inside the payload of the nanosatellite. The imaging capabilities of the microscope allow the team members to examine individual cell populations inside intricate channels at the microscale, while its miniature form factor and portability render it easy to integrate in testing setups.

The Dino-Lite AM4515T4-GFBW digital microscope is optimized for research and viewing fluorescent objects by using 480nm excitation LEDs. It has a long-pass type 510nm emission filter that is designed to observe a wide range fluorophores with applications in developmental biology, pathology, and anatomy. With its high magnification of 400~470x, it reveals even the smallest details on all kinds of objects. All of these factors make the AM4515T4-GFBW the smallest fluorescence microscope in the world, capable of many applications and visualizing a vast range of fluorescence.

As procurement and manufacturing of the nanosatellite continue, students will start qualifying their payload and critical subsystems to ensure total confidence in their performance prior to satellite integration.

*Within the Fly Your Satellite! programme, students have the unique opportunity to get introduced to the working methods adopted in professional space programmes by participating in their own student satellite project, which is designed and developed by the universities themselves, and whose development is funded by those universities as well.

The University of Lincoln in the UK has a department of conservation and restoration that teaches students in these special subjects. Joanne Wright is scientific technician and teaches in the department. The department is using several Dino-Lites. "We receive objects from museums but also quite a few from private individuals. They often want to know more about the history of the object, but they may also ask us to restore the object or to prevent further decay. We come across many different materials, such as metal and stone, but also wood, leather and cloth. With our Dino-Lites – we own at least 8 of them - we can quickly analyse the material, for instance a textile. With Dino-Lite we can zoom in to the fibre level and this will tell us a great deal. Not just in historical perspective, but it can also 'tell' us how to conserve or restore."

The Dino-Lite with UV light is often used to look at paintings. Joanne: "This allows us to look at the painting layer by layer. We cannot only judge the colours, but we can also see if there are other paintings on other layers or see if there is older restoration work. This makes the UV light a very relevant addition to the microscope function. We also use the polarisation function quite often. This can take away annoying glare, for instance on metal objects, which will literally give us a better image.

It happens that the Dino-Lite works too well and Joanna and her students get to see things that they had rather not seen. "Right, we recently had to study a rag doll and during the inspection with the Dino-Lite we saw that the doll was covered with lice. It was swarming with them. We quickly put it in the freezer and only continued the next day when all the lice were dead."

Dino-Lite products are used in many restoration workshops and museums throughout Europe. The Dino-Lite is a very useful tool for classifying, documenting and performing restorations on paintings, paper, textiles and other objects of art. For restorer Marjan de Visser, the Dino-Lite is a very helpful tool in her restoration work:

"When restoring a painting, it was unclear whether parts of it were painted over and whether in the past any damage had been done by varnish removal. It was said, that in the past, a friend of the owner did them a favor by cleaning the painting with a strong acid. Something went wrong with this, and to examine this properly, I inspected the painting with a Dino-Lite digital microscope at 45x magnification. The images measure 9 mm in width:"

Click here to download the Dino-Lite "cultural heritage" theme brochure.

In the world of 3D digital documentation, capturing tiny artifacts with very detailed features is tricky due to two main reasons: expensive equipment and the need for specialized skills. This research addresses this challenge by aiming to create 3D representations of small objects with intricate details using affordable equipment (passive sensors) and an image-based approach. The study focuses on cuneiform tablets, which are complex to digitize. Digital replicas of these artifacts can be useful for various purposes like research, sharing, interdisciplinary collaboration, machine learning experiments, and linguistic studies. The system used for this micro-level surveying, particularly Dino-Lite microscopes, proves to be efficient and dependable for digitizing and documenting cuneiform tablets.

Photogrammetry is the art, science, and technology of obtaining reliable information about physical objects. An important part of photogrammetry is the processes used to record, measure, and interpret photographs and patterns of radiant electromagnetic energy, as well as other phenomena, in order to obtain reliable information about physical objects and the environment. Microscopes are not new in photogrammetry in general, but the integration of USB Microscopes into the process adds more flexibility and portability without compromising performance.

As 3D digital documentation becomes more widespread, the survey of tiny artifacts becomes increasingly important. In this regard, Dino-Lite USB microscopes prove to be a groundbreaking new tool for micro-photogrammetry.

The research aims to address the need for a digital survey and a 3D representation of small objects complex surfaces and sub-millimeter morphological characteristics using a low-cost configuration (passive sensors) for an image-based approach.

The experiments concerned cuneiform tablets, which are challenging due to their morphological and geometrical characteristics. The digital replica of these unique artefacts can be helpful for their study and interpretation and many innovative applications: access and sharing, a collaborative interdisciplinary study among several experts, experimentation with machine learning for automatic character recognition, and linguistic studies. These experts have used a physical replica of a cuneiform tablet with wedges to perform the first tests to evaluate the photogrammetric use of a digital microscope.

(reference to images 11:a-b) The first acquisition configuration with the turntable calibrated plate: (a) three-dimensional calibrated plate (updated prototype) detail; (b) complete setup configuration. (reference to images 12:a-b) The second acquisition configuration with the screw clamp: (a) the screw clamp coaxial to the rotating base; (b) detail of the positioning of the tablet in the clamp.

A Dino-Lite microscope of the Long Working Distance (LWD) range was used for the tests and also in the next campaign to digitize the original cuneiform tablets. A 20x magnification was chosen to work with, at which the working distance is 48.7 mm, and the depth of field is 3.6 mm with this model. The model has a built-in adjustable polarizer to reduce reflections on shiny objects. However, the lighting conditions were improved with the adoption of an LED illumination ring. The light does not directly hit the object due to the shape and diffusing material of the lens hood. Therefore, the diffused light conditions neutralize the shadow cones without changes in the intensity of the shadows, light, and colors.

Source: Research conducted by the Model Lab, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Salerno.

Division of the Warsaw University of Technology. The Print Technology Division of the Warsaw University of Technology in Poland is using four types of Dino-Lite digital microscopes to analyse the quality of printed images and photographs. This research includes zooming in on microscopic changes in paper and card stock during the printing process. In addition, the university's researchers use the digital microscopes to monitor the various stages of book-binding. These include cutting, folding and testing the physical endurance of bound books.

Dr. Georgij Petriaszwili, professor at the Print Technology Division, says, "Dino-Lite provides excellent image analysis quality for a fair price. Until recently we were using other microscope brands. They were expensive and didn't always meet our needs. I first learned about the quality of Dino-Lite during a visit to the Arteveldehogeschool [Artevelde University College] in Ghent, Belgium. When I returned home to Poland, I started reading more about the options and the diverse models of Dino-Lite digital microscopes. I was pleasantly surprised. What's really important for us is that, in spite of the differences between Dino-Lite microscopes, the performance and support software form a well-coordinated package. We're definitely keeping track of any new developments from Dino-Lite. I expect that we'll be using the WiFi features in the near future to process greater numbers of images online." The Print Technology Division of the Warsaw University of Technology trains specialists in analysing the image quality of graphical products. The division cooperates closely with graphics companies and printers throughout Poland. By 2018, the division will have been in existence for fifty years. Thus far, the division has trained over two thousand scientific professionals in the field of graphics arts. New generations of graphics researchers at the Warsaw University of Technology are using the following Dino-Lite microscopes:

Edge AM7115 MZT, AM4113T-FVW, Premier AM3713 TB, Premier AM41132 TL (R4).