ISTSat-1 students at ESEC

ISTSat-1, a first Portuguese CubeSat, completed its crucial structural qualification and thermal-vacuum tests in 2023 as part of the Fly Your Satellite! Programme, and now it‘s ready for the next destination: space. 

ISTsat-1 is the first-ever nanosatellite designed by students from University of Lisbon’s Instituto Superior Técnico and is part of the second edition of Fly Your Satellite! (FYS), an ESA Education program that gives university students the opportunity to design, build, launch, and operate educational satellites. 

The Portuguese team travelled to the CubeSat Support Facility (CSF) in ESEC (Redu, Belgium) in February 2023 to perform the Vibration tests. After successful completion, they travelled again to the CSF from 13 to 24 March to undergo the phase of Environmental Tests in the Thermal Vacuum Chamber (TVAC), which aims at verifying the correct functionality of the spacecraft under space-representative thermal and vacuum environments. It is a major milestone for any space object built on Earth, from small Cubesats to large spacecraft.