Fly Your Satellite! Design Booster pilot
The Fly Your Satellite! Design Booster pilot edition is for CubeSat teams with a preliminary design that want to benefit from support from ESA for the consolidation of their detailed design. University student teams from an eligible state, working on a one-, two-, three- or six- unit CubeSat mission are invited to apply to the pilot edition of this programme.
As part of this programme, the design of the University’s satellite is reviewed by ESA specialists, who identify potential improvements or issues with design and assist in solving them, allowing teams to maximize their chances of success with the continuation of their missions. In addition, students will benefit from training opportunities and webinars and introduced to common practices in the space domain.
The opportunity aims at helping less-experienced teams in going through the early phases of the project, which is when important design choices are made. Students will learn to conduct trade-offs, run analysis, and evaluate options while balancing the scope and resources of the mission. Receiving support from ESA experts at this stage may facilitate future development activities, since performing modifications is still relatively easy and cheap, when compared to later phases of the project. As such, participating in the programme can contribute to ease the learning curve for unexperienced teams, developing a CubeSat mission for the first time.
Students will learn to consider the full project lifecycle at the design stage, in terms of engineering, resources and expertise, which will translate into smoother planning and execution of verification activities as well as more robust in-flight operations. Special emphasis will be made on the importance of early testing, and teams will be invited to work on prototypes and development models to demonstrate functionalities and performances are adequate. For more advanced missions at the detailed design stage, teams may perform environmental test campaigns on their subsystems, making use of the dedicated CubeSat Support Facility in ESEC (Belgium).
The pilot programme follows a fixed schedule spanning 1.5 years. Information on its timeline, activities, and milestones is captured in the FYS Design Booster phases page.
Want to apply?
Student teams can apply by submitting a proposal describing their CubeSat project. The Proposal Instructions page contains all the information related to how to apply and conditions to apply.
It is possible to register for the two Information Sessions for potential applicants.
New opportunities can be expected targeting university teams at different stages of the project lifecycle. Keep an eye out on the ESA Education website to be updated on the latest news. For further information please contact us at cubesats @ esa.int.
Are you interested in participating in the FYS Design Booster pilot edition? Instructions to submit a proposal can be found here: FYS Design Booster proposal instructions. To go back to the about page click here: Fly Your Satellite! Design Booster about.