Team selected for the March 2025 test window of Fly Your Satellite! Test Opportunities
The ΦINIX-1 University team has been selected for the March 2025 test window of the Fly Your Satellite! Test Opportunities programme following a call for proposals opened in September 2024. The proposal evaluation and selection were carried out by Fly Your Satellite! Team and CubeSat Support Facility (CSF) operators. The team is now primed to start learning about environmental testing and eventually testing their device at ESA facilities!
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.
We are happy to announce hereby the selected team for the March 2025 test window of Fly Your Satellite! Test Opportunities!
ΦINIX-1, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (University of Athens) – Greece
The test campaign is directly tied to the ΦINIX-1 CubeSat mission which aims to demonstrate an in-house developed drag sail.
It is a mission to offer students hands-on opportunities to engage with cutting-edge technology and processes that are integral to the project development while providing ΦINIX-1 students a way to gain technological experience for CubeSat/spacecraft systems design and testing.
The project’s goal is to create a new, low-cost design drag sail aiming to enhance the deorbiting technology toolkit for future CubeSat missions, possibly in support of ESA’s zero debris approach.
The programme will now kick off with a meeting where the team will present their test proposal in front of Fly Your Satellite! engineers and CSF operators. Following the test preparation phase and gaining the seal of approval for the test campaign execution or the “green light”, the team will eventually be testing their drag sail in the CubeSat Support Facility for Vibration and Thermal Vacuum Testing!
Stay tuned for the next test opportunities! More information about the Fly Your Satellite! Test Opportunities programme can be found here.