Design Booster timeline and phases
Design Booster is aimed at students working on the design of a satellite mission. The programme phases are adapted from the typical development cycle of space missions to fit the context of university or other tertiary education institution projects. The programme follows a fixed schedule spanning 1.5 years.
Training and Selection (October-December 2026)
A shortlist of teams will attend the FYS Design Booster Training Week, where they will attend training offered by ESA experts. Students will receive valuable pointers, covering different areas such as engineering (design, tests, operations), project management, space debris, and more.
About one month after this training, teams will defend their satellite design in front of a Panel of ESA experts at a selection workshop. Selected applicants will enter FYS Design Booster.
Baseline design review (January-March 2027)
Selected teams will baseline their design and implement all those lessons stemming from the training week and the experts' feedback. Based on the design documentation, a Baseline design review will be conducted, which is a simplified version of the standard ESA review. The overall status of each satellite will be assessed. Then, with the support of ESA specialists, who will identify key issues and assist in solving them, corrective actions will be defined and agreed to address the discrepancies identified.
Design consolidation and subsystem testing (April 2027-February 2028)
Once the Baseline design review is concluded, teams will have about one year to consolidate their detailed design. During this period, teams are expected to finalise system and subsystem analysis, develop and test prototypes to increase confidence in the design and, resources and schedule permitting, conduct an environmental test campaign of one of the satellite units at the CubeSat Support Facility in ESA ESEC (Belgium). Monthly status meetings will be organised between the Fly Your Satellite! team and the students with the objective to discuss technical and programmatic difficulties, major risks and mitigation actions, and the outlook for the coming month. Ad-hoc technical meetings and webinars may be organised to support specific or common issues among the teams. Guidance during this phase will be offered in the areas of project management, regulatory process of satellite missions, and preparation for AIV, launch and operations.
Final Design Review and Presentations (March-June 2028)
The programme will conclude with a Final design review, a thorough overall examination of the technical and development status of the satellite project to check if the detailed design has been consolidated. This practice is tailored from professional space programmes and aims to get students acquainted with ESA and space industry work methodologies and standards. At the end of this process, participating student teams will present their results, the project outlook and lessons learned in the final presentations.