The Romanian satellite Goliat was launched with the ESA’s vehicle Vega today, on 13th February 2012 from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.
Vega was realizing into orbit seven ESA sponsored CubeSats built by teams of students from European universities. Among these, the Romanian nanosatellite Goliat was built by the University of Bucharest, Polytechnic University of Bucharest, Romanian Space Agency, Romanian Institute of Space Science, as part of ESA Education programme.
The satellites were deployed into an orbit of 300 x 1450 km at an inclination of 69.5 degrees. They had a natural orbital lifetime of up to 4 years, depending on their rate of orbital decay due to atmospheric drag. They used small ground stations based at their respective universities.