First Results from INSPIRESAT-1

INSPIRESat-1 (IS-1) is the flagship mission under the INternational Satellite Program In Research and Education (INSPIRE). IS-1 launched on February 14 at 00:30 UTC to a sun synchronous dawn-dusk orbit onboard the Indian Space Research Organization's PSLV C52 mission. First contact was established with the spacecraft 45 minutes after launch. IS-1 has returned more than 10000 beacons in its first 10 days in orbit and the first science instruments were turned on by February 27th. The IS-1 carries two scientific instruments: The Compact Ionospheric Probe (CIP) developed at National Central University (NCU) for studying Earth's dynamic ionosphere and the Dual-zone Aperture X-ray Solar Spectrometer (DAXSS) developed at LASP for studying the highly-variable solar X-ray radiation. The IS-1 spacecraft was primarily developed at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado with significant contributions from the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST), NCU of Taiwan and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore. In this paper we will present details on spacecraft performance in a unique dawn dusk orbit which presents thermal challenges not encountered frequently by nano-satellite platforms. We also present preliminary science results from its two instruments. The spacecraft completed its primary six-month mission on August 14^th 2022.