Fly Your Satellite Programme History
To date, ESA’s Education Office has supported 39 student CubeSat teams from ESA Member and Cooperating States, including:
- 2008-2012: 12 student-built CubeSats, of which 7 were launched on Vega’s Maiden Flight
- 2012-2013: Spanish HumSat-D student CubeSat, supported in its test campaign
- 2013-2016: first edition of the Fly Your Satellite! programme, with 6 CubeSats selected to participate in the first phase of the programme: three of these CubeSats – OUFTI-1, e-st@r-II, AAUSAT4 – were launched on Soyuz VS14 on 25 April 2016
- 2015: launch of AAUSAT5 to the International Space Station and deployment to orbit under an ISS dedicated edition of the Fly Your Satellite! programme
- 2017: 6 CubeSat teams are admitted to the second edition of the Fly Your Satellite! programme
- 2020: 3 CubeSat teams are admitted to the third edition of the Fly Your Satellite! programme
- 2021: launch of LEDSAT (Fly Your Satellite! second edition) on Vega VV19 on 17 August 2021
- 2022: 6 CubeSat teams are admitted to Fly Your Satellite! Design Booster pilot programme
- 2023: 4 teams (UoBSat, DARE, Aalto-3 & OrbitNTNU) and executed environmental testing at the CubeSat Support Facility thanks to the Fly Your Satellite! Test Opportunities programme
- 2023: launch of EIRSAT-1 2U CubeSat (Fly Your Satellite 2! edition) on 1 December 2023
- 2024: 4 teams are selected to the 4th edition of the FYS! programme including PocketQubes for the first time
- 2024: 4 additional teams (ALESAT, VIBES, 6S and FrontierSat) shall execute environmental testing as part of the Fly Your Satellite! Test Opportunities programme
- 2024: launch of 3Cat4 and ISTSat-1 (Fly Your Satellite! 2) on 9 July 2024