FYS Factsheet Updated

8/18/2019 FYS Factsheet Updated

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fly your satellite!

→ EDUCATION CUBESATS

ON SOYUZ VS14

Info sheet


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THE ESA FLY YOUR SATELLITE! PROGRAMME

Objective

ESA’s Fly Your Satellite! (FYS) programme is a recurring, hands-on programme designed and managed by the

ESA Education Office in close collaboration with European Universities, with the objective to complement

academic education and inspire, engage, and better prepare university students for a more effective

introduction to their future professions in the space sector.

How the programme is conducted

During the course of the programme, the university student teams are supported in the development of their

own satellite, whose mission is conceived at their own universities, and whose development is funded by the

universities themselves and/or other national contributors.

Coordinated and guided by their university professors, the student teams are supported and mentored byESA specialists through different programme phases, all aiming at ensuring the satellites undergo accurate

verification before being offered a chance to fly to space.

To this end, ESA offers the CubeSat student teams access to state of the art test facilities; financial support for

travelling to participate in workshops, training, and test sessions; sponsors their participation in the launch

campaign at the European Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana; and offers them a launch opportunity.

Learning goals

By participating in a real satellite programme, the students gain significant practical experience in the full

lifecycle of an actual space project, from designing, to manufacturing, assembling, integrating, testing,

preparing the project documentation, learning the logic of conduct of formal reviews, participating in a launch

campaign, operating their own small satellite, and preparing for its disposal in compliance with the space debris

mitigation requirements.

Under close ESA supervision, students are introduced to the working methods adopted in professional space

programmes, fundamental to facilitating a transfer of competences, and to allow the students to build their

professional skills.

The programme phases

The FYS programme consists of 4 phases. During each phase, the CubeSats student teams have to achieve pre-

defined objectives and must undergo reviews conducted by ESA specialists. The successful completion of theformer phase is precondition to gain access to the next phase:

• Build Your Satellite! satellite integration and functional tests in laboratory conditions;

• Test Your Satellite! environmental tests, conducted in conditions representative of the space mission;

• Ticket to Orbit! launch campaign preparation, installation in the CubeSat orbital deployer (P-POD) and

installation of deployer and CubeSats on board the launcher;

• CubeSats in Space! launch and in-orbit operations.


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Programme cost (present campaign)

• For each individual university CubeSat: typically between 25 000 and 500 000 Euros, through national

institutional, academic and sponsorship funding.

• For ESA: ESA’s financial contribution covered the procurement of the launch as auxiliary payload, CubeSatsaccess to test facilities, cost of the ESA supervising personnel, including experts’ mentorship and conduct

of the ESA project reviews, as well as sponsorships to support students to travel to participate in the key

events of the programme.

EDUCATION CUBESATS ON THE SOYUZFREGAT VS14 FLIGHT

Three student-built CubeSats - OUFTI-1, Belgium; e-st@r-II, Italy; AAUSAT-4, Denmark - have been accepted for

launch on the Soyuz VS14 flight from the European Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. Together with CNES’

MICROSCOPE scientific satellite, they will be auxiliary payload in the launch of the ESA Earth observation

satellite Sentinel 1B, the main passenger on this flight.

Oufti-1, University of Liège, Belgium

OUFTI-1 will be the first Belgian student-built satellite, the first Belgian CubeSat, the first satellite fully

conceived, built, managed and operated in Belgium, and the world’s first satellite featuring D-STAR radio

communications. It has been developed at the University of Liège (ULg), Belgium, with assistance from the

industrial engineering schools HEPL-ISIL and HELMO-Gramme, both from Liège, Belgium.

OUFTI-1 is funded nationally mainly by the Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO) and the University of Liège.

The objective of OUFTI-1 is to test its innovative payload, the D-STAR digital radio communication (sub)system;

this is a recently-developed amateur radio protocol that provides several built-in advanced features, allowing

digital communication, simultaneous voice and data transmission (e.g., GPS data and computer files), complete

routing over the internet, and roaming on a worldwide basis. OUFTI-1 will implement the first D-STAR repeater in space.

Oufti-1, University of Liège, Belgium

Spacecraft name: OUFTI-1

– Mass at launch: 920g

– Dimensions: ~10cm x 10cm x 11cm

– Power: 2 W

– Solar arrays dimension: 5 solar arrays of approx.8x8 cm (body mounted)

Mission:

– Launch date: 22 April 2016

– Operational orbit: Elliptical approx. 454 x 682 km, inclination 98.2 deg (polar)

– Mission lifetime: Design: 1 year

– Ground stations: University of Liège (operated by students)

Payload:

– D-STAR Digital Smart Technology for Amateur Radio


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e-st@r-II, Politecnico di Torino, Italy

e-st@r-II is part of a continuous educational programme – e-st@r - established at the Politecnico of Torino,

Italy, as an effective means for educating aerospace engineering students. e-st@r-I was launched on the Vega

Maiden Flight on 12 February 2012, as part of the first ESA CubeSats programme, direct precursor of the Fly Your

Satellite! Programme. The e-st@r student team is coordinated by ASSET (AeroSpace Systems Engineering Team)

of the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department of Politecnico di Torino, and makes use of their

university’s System and Technologies for Aerospace Research Laboratory (STARLab).

e-st@r-II (Educational SaTellite @ politecnico di toRino - II) is self-funded nationally through the Student

Projects Grants initiative of the Politecnico di Torino.

The objective of e-st@r-II is to demonstrate autonomous active attitude determination capabilities based on

a system that makes use of the Earth’s magnetic field (A-ADCS). During the commissioning phase, the payload

will be deactivated, leaving the satellite in its free tumbling motion, without any attitude stabilization. The

A-ADCS will then kick-in by interacting with the Earth magnetic field in order to demonstrate it can actively

de-tumble the satellite’s angular velocities, and it can properly determine the satellite attitude.

e-st@r-II, Politecnico di Torino, Italy

Spacecraft name: e-st@r-II



– Power: 2.75 W


Mission:



– Mission lifetime: Minimum: 3 months

– Ground stations: Radio Amateurs, Bra, Cuneo, Italy

Payload:

– A-ADCS Active Attitude Determination and Control Subsystem

AAUSAT-4, Aalborg University, Denmark

AAUSAT-4 is part of a continuous educational programme – AAUSAT – established at the University of Aalborg,

Denmark. The AAUSAT-5 student-built CubeSat, based on a design very similar to AAUSAT-4, was released into

orbit from the International Space Station on 5 October 2015, also as part of the ESA FYS! Programme.

AAUSAT-4 is funded nationally by the University of Aalborg with the support of national sponsors such as

Sparnord Fonden, Søfartsstyrelsen, Printca, Marel Denmark, Hytek Aalborg (main sponsors), and Satlab ApS,

Mekoprint, Cobham, Rohde-Schwarz.

AAUSAT-4 will conduct in-orbit testing of an improved version of the Automated Identification System (AIS)

receiver, a system developed by the Aalborg students to track and identify ships and other vehicles carrying an

AIS transponder, which are transiting away from coastal areas and in remote areas, to enable safer use of new

shipping lanes.


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AAUSAT-4, Aalborg University, Denmark

Spacecraft name: AAUSAT-4



– Power: 1.5 W


Mission:



– Mission lifetime: Design: 1 year

– Ground stations: Aalborg University (operated by students)

Payload:

– AIS Automatic Identification System

THE FLY YOUR SATELLITE! PROGRAMME HISTORY

World-wide, over the past 15 years, hundreds of CubeSats have been launched. To date, the ESA Education Office

has supported 20 student CubeSats from ESA Member and Cooperating States, including:

• 2008-2012: 12 student-built CubeSats supported, out of which 7 launched on the Vega Maiden Flight.

• 2012-2013: Spanish HumSat-D student CubeSat, supported in its test campaign

• 2013: start of the Fly Your Satellite! Programme, with 6 CubeSats selected to participate in Phase 1 of theProgramme; three of these CubeSats – OUFTI-1, e-st@r-II, AAUSAT-4 – are to be launched on Soyuz VS14 on

22 April 2016.

• 2015: launch of AAUSAT-5 to the International Space Station, and deployment to orbit, under a dedicated

edition of the Fly Your Satellite! Programme.

THE FLY YOUR SATELLITE! PROGRAMME IN THE ESA EDUCATIONALCONTEXT

Fly Your Satellite! is one of the several hands-on programmes for university students offered by the ESA

Education Office. These activities are all incorporated in the recently born ESA Academy programme, which

brings together existing and new elements of the ESA Education Programme for universities. The ESA Academy

groups two interconnected pillars of activity:

• Hands-on Space Projects, an existing set of programmes that enables students to gain first-hand experience

of real space-related projects. They include satellite projects, such as Fly Your Satellite! and ESEO (European

Student Earth Orbiter), as well as a number of other opportunities for student experiments projects to be

conducted on a wide variety of platforms, such as sounding rockets, stratospheric balloons, a drop tower, a

hypergravity centrifuge, and parabolic flights.


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• Training and Learning Programme, a new initiative offering an entirely new and varied portfolio of courses

given by space experts and professionals coming from all fields of ESA’s expertise, as well as from space

industry and academia.

In addition to providing access to existing ESA establishments and partners’ infrastructures, the ESA Academy

makes use of new dedicated facilities located at ESA’s Redu Centre in Belgium. The Training and Learning Centre,

which started courses in March 2016, and the CubeSat Education Centre will become operational in 2017.

USEFUL LINKS & CONTACT INFO

ESA’s Fly Your Satellite! programme: www.esa.int/Education/CubeSats_-_Fly_Your_Satellite

ESA Academy programme: www.esa.int/Education/The_ESA_Academy_is_born

ESA Education programme: www.esa.int/education

ESA Education on Facebook: esa education

Fly Your Satellite! image gallery: www.flickr.com/photos/esa_events/albums/72157666846587125

Monica Talevi, [email protected]

OUFTI-1

www.oufti-1.be

oufti1cubesat

@UniversiteLiege, #Oufti1Go

Xavier Werner, [email protected]

e-st@r-II

www.polito.it/cubesat-team

CubeSat Team

@CubeSatTeam

Sabrina Corpino, [email protected]

AAUSAT-4

space.aau.dk/aausat4

aaustudentspace

@aauteknat

Jens Dalsgaard Nielsen, [email protected]


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www.esa.int/education

esa education

@esa__education

Documents

FYS Factsheet Updated