Teams selected for the October 2024 test window of Fly Your Satellite! Test Opportunities
In brief
6S and FrontierSat university teams have been selected for the October 2024 test window of the Fly Your Satellite! Test Opportunities programme following a call for proposals opened in April 2024. The proposal evaluation and selection were carried out by Fly Your Satellite! Team and CubeSat Support Facility (CSF) operators. Teams are thrilled to start learning about environmental testing and eventually testing their devices at ESA facilities!
In-depth
ESA invited university student teams ESA Member States, Canada, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Slovenia who would like to receive support and training in conducting an environmental test campaign, with mainly educational objectives to propose their test plan and device for the “Fly Your Satellite!” (FYS) test opportunities programme.
Following the selection process, two teams were invited to present their test proposal the Fly Your Satellite! Team at the programme kick-off meeting held in June 2024. During the same event, the students were offered a webinar on environmental testing offered by CSF operators.
The selected teams did an outstanding job in presenting their test proposals and responding to the questions raised by the Fly Your Satellite! team. We are happy to announce hereby the selected teams for the October test window of Fly Your Satellite! Test Opportunities!
6S, Politecnico di Milano – Italy
The PoliSpace 6S CubeSat is an educational project of the PoliSpace association, with the main objective of giving hands-on experience to BSc, MSc, and PhD students from Politecnico di Milano. The project aims to develop a 1U CubeSat entirely designed, integrated, and operated by students from Politecnico di Milano. The CubeSat is a testbed for the technology demonstration of two payloads for in-orbit power production and storage. The primary payload is a set of perovskite solar cells, with the aim of characterizing their behaviour in space such as long-term degradation, and self-healing properties. The second is a mock-up of a structural battery aiming to verify that the structure and panels can withstand the mechanical and thermal loads that the satellite will experience during launch and operations in space.
CalgaryToSpace -1 (FrontierSat), University of Calgary – Canada
CalgaryToSpace, is a student-led interdisciplinary team based out of the Schulich School of Engineering at the University of Calgary. The primary objective of CalgaryToSpace is to inspire, empower, and educate post-secondary students by providing an opportunity to work on a real space mission.
The satellite will serve as a platform for two scientific instruments: (1) The Mini Plasma Imager (MPI), (2) A Deployable Composite Lattice Boom (DCLB). In a near-polar orbit, the satellite will be used to collect data on ionic winds over the long term, up to 2 years. The DCLB will be deployed for its very first demonstration in space and will have its structural and flexural properties studied through camera images.
Stay tuned for the next test opportunities! More information about the Fly Your Satellite! Test Opportunities programme can be found here.