Most would claim that the space race has already been won. The United States was the first to make it to the moon and after that, it seemed as though quite a few countries around the world decided that was all that was really needed. Then suddenly, those same countries realized that while the final frontier was reached by America, sending up satellites in order to orbit the Earth was well worth the effort.

Since the first satellite was launched into orbit, there have been all kinds of different upgrades that have helped communications around the globe get better and better. While some of the bigger countries in the world are generally the only ones that are managing to launch satellites into orbit, one smaller European country was able to join the ranks of those with a communications satellite floating around the atmosphere. On Monday morning, Poland launched its first ever satellite into space. The satellite was carried into the space strapped onto a Vega rocket.

The Polish satellite, or PW-Sat, was constructed by a team made up of students from the Warsaw University of Technology and scientists from the Space Research Centre at the Polish Academy of Sciences. While the satellite is Polish, it was not launched from Poland. Rather, the satellite and the Vega rocket were launched from a space port that belongs to the European Space Agency in French Guyana. 

An hour after the launch, the PW-Sat broke away from the Vega Rocket and was expected to establish orbit around the Earth. The separation and entry into orbit should occur while the satellite is roughly 1,500 KM from the Earth. An hour after separation was completed, Polish authorities said that the satellite rolled out an antenna designed to send telemetry data back to a station located on the ground in Poland.