Fly Your Satellite! is an educational program of the ESA Education and Knowledge Management Office operated in close collaboration with European universities and aimed at complementing academic education.
It is providing university students across Europe with the unique opportunity to gain practical experience in key phases of a challenging, real satellite project: a CubeSat – from integration, test and verification to launch and operations. Through Fly Your Satellite! and other educational projects, ESA acts to inspire, engage and better prepare students to undertake scientific and technological careers, particularly in the space sector. Fly Your Satellite! is part of the newly-established ESA Education and Knowledge Management Office’s program.
As part of the Fly Your Satellite! Program, 3 student-built CubeSats have been selected for launch out of the 6 initial participating teams, and have been working hard to perfect their spacecraft:
- OUFTI-1 from the University of Liege, Belgium, will test a new communications subsystem;
- e-st@r-II from the Polytechnic of Turin, Italy, will demonstrate an attitude determination system using measurements of the Earth’s magnetic field;
- AAUSAT-4 from the University of Aalborg, Denmark, will operate an Automated Identification System (AIS) receiver in order to identify and track the position of ships transiting away from coastal areas.
The Fly Your Satellite! CubeSats will be respectively, the 52nd, 53rd and 54th ESA spacecraft launched by Arianespace.