FYS Design Booster phases

The pilot edition of ‘Fly Your Satellite! Design Booster’ is aimed at students working in the design of a CubeSat mission. The programme phases are adapted from the typical development cycle of space missions to fit the context of university projects. The pilot programme follows a fixed schedule spanning 1.5 years.

Training and Selection (November-December 2022)

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 CubeSat 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 2023)

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 CubeSat will be assessed, and with the support of ESA specialists, who identify key issues and assist in solving them, corrective actions are defined and agreed to address the discrepancies identified.

Design consolidation and subsystem testing (April 2023-Feb 2024)

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 CubeSat units at the CubeSat Support Facility in 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 CubeSat missions, and preparation for AIV, launch and operations.

Final Design Review (March-April 2024)

The programme will conclude with a Final Design Review, a thorough overall examination of the technical and development status of the CubeSat 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 working methodologies and standards. At the end of this process, participating student teams will present their results, the project outlook and lessons learned.