Fly Your Satellite Programme History
To date, ESA’s Education Office has supported 55 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) 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) executed 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
- 2024: 5 teams are selected to the 2nd edition of the Design Booster programme
- 2025: ΦΙNIX-1 (University of Athens) is selected for the March test window of the Test Opportunities programme at ESA’s CubeSat Support Facility
- 2025: AlbaCubeSat (University of Padova) is selected for the May test window of the Test Opportunities programme at ESA’s CubeSat Support Facility
- 2025: AGH Lunar Technologies (AGH University of Science and Technology) is selected for the July test window of the Test Opportunities programme at ESA’s CubeSat Support Facility
- 2026: two teams (TRACE from TU Darmstadt and GIFTS from University College Dublin) are selected for the Test Opportunities programme at ESA’s CubeSat Support Facility
- 2026: two teams (EXCALIBUR from Queen Mary University of London and GraviTE from AGH University of Kraków) are selected for the July 2026 test window of the Test Opportunities programme at ESA’s CubeSat Support Facility