About Educational Satellites

• Fly Your Satellite! is open for more advanced teams that want to benefit from ESA guidance during the later phases of the missions, starting from the verification up to the operations, with the possibility of receiving a sponsored launch opportunity.
• Design Booster is open for teams with a preliminary design that want to benefit from support from ESA for the consolidation of their detailed design.
• Test Opportunities is dedicated to teams who would like to test their item (e.g. satellite, subsystem, payload, component…) through an environmental test campaign, while receiving support and training on it.

Satellite form factors: PocketQubes and CubeSats

PocketQubes are picosatellites with a standardised form factor and dimensions. They are based on a cubic shape of only 5 cm per side. Being so small they are very cheap to produce and offer an incredible hands-on opportunity for students to train themselves with real space hardware.

CubeSats are nanosatellites with a standardized form factor, typically based on one or more cubic units, each measuring 10 cm per side. Larger than PocketQubes but smaller than traditional commercial satellites, CubeSats utilize Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) components, enabling rapid development and deployment. This streamlined approach allows for the full lifecycle experience of a space mission in a significantly shorter timeframe, offering valuable hands-on experience.

Educational facilities

ESA Academy makes use of dedicated facilities located at ESA’s Education Centre in ESEC-Galaxia, Belgium.

In particular, the Training and Learning Facility, used to deliver training courses, and the CubeSat Support Facility (CSF), a cleanroom laboratory with test facilities, are used throughout the programme.

Further training opportunities

Complementary to the hands-on programme, the ESA Education Office offers training courses in collaboration with the ESA Academy’s Training Programme. The training weeks particularly aim at students and teams in early phases of satellite projects and include a CubeSats Concurrent Engineering Workshop and a CubeSat Hands-On Training Week.

More information about these sessions can be found on the ESA Academy’s training sessions in the Current and Future opportunities website.  

Diversity, Equity and Inclusiveness

ESA is committed to achieving diversity and creating an inclusive professional environment. To this end, we welcome proposals and applications from all eligible candidates irrespective of gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, beliefs, age, disability, or other characteristics. The ESA Academy strongly encourages inclusiveness within its programmes and within participating teams, which contributes to the enrichment of our programme.

 Whenever possible, we seek to accommodate individuals with disabilities by providing the necessary support, either digitally or at the location of the training. In case of any questions or specific needs, please reach out to esa.academy@esa.int to get assistance or advice.