About ESEO - the European Student Earth Orbiter

ESEO (European Student Earth Orbiter) is an ESA educational satellite project for university students - a part of the ESA Academy portfolio of hands-on space projects. 

ESEO is an ESA micro-satellite project with an educational objective: for the participating university students to acquire hands-on experience of a real space project, in order to prepare a well-qualified technical workforce for the European space sector.  This was achieved by offering the student the opportunity to develop the payload (scientific instruments or technology demonstration experiments), key satellite subsystems and the ground segment (ground stations and Mission Control) to the mission, under the coordination of ESA and SITAEL, the Industrial Prime Contractor, responsible for the satellite platform, system integration and testing, and the technical coordination of the student teams.  

Ten Universities from eight ESA Member States (Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, UK) have participated in ESEO, with more than 600 university students involved in the project since its inception.

The ESEO mission will validate in-orbit the SITAEL S-50 platform (50kg including the payload), the smallest within the SITAEL products portfolio, and hence it represents a crucial milestone of the intensive hard work in designing, developing and manufacturing innovative multi-purpose small satellites platforms’.