Abstract:

ST3LLARSat1 “BOIRA” is the first student CubeSat of the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), a public Spanish university founded in 1989. The student CubeSat program started in September 2022 and was selected by ESA in December 2022 for its Fly-Your-Satellite (FYS) Booster design program, where the aim is to complete development by mid-2024 and launch before mid-2025.

UC3M’s student CubeSat program is integrated in its Master in Space Engineering (MISE), which is an interdepartmental 2-years master led by the aerospace engineering department. It started in 2018 with the aim to provide the comprehensive and specialized training required by the space industry. It is taught in English and consists of a 1st year of core formative courses and a 2nd year formed by a mix of elective courses and thesis/projects options. Since 2022 it has been adapted to include the student CubeSat program by performing the mission feasibility study during the 1st year’s “Spacecraft Pre-Design” core course and continuing the development in the 2nd year via Master theses and the optional course “Integral Project”. In order to achieve continuity and maximize educational benefit, during the latter course, the 2nd year MISE students are supported by 1st year students.

The current ST3LLARsat1 “BOIRA” team roster numbers 28 people, and is composed of two professors, three PhD candidates, eight 2nd year MISE students, and fourteen 1st year MISE students’ volunteers. In terms of gender distribution, among the 25 students there are 6 female (24%), but it is noted that they represent 42% of the leadership positions (i.e., the system engineer and the structural and AOCS leads).

The aim of ST3LLARsat1 “BOIRA” is to design, integrate, validate, launch, and operate a 2U CubeSat with the primary goal being educational, and secondary goals related to technology and science.

The educational goal is achieved by providing the students with hands-on experience in a real space project via a hybrid approach of formal learning (via the MISE) and practical application. The latter comes from the fact that it is our students who lead the CubeSat mission and are responsible for the study, design, and development of all the tasks and components (guided and supported by MISE staff). The technological goal covers demonstration of: [1] two novel, in-house developments (specifically, a compact, dual-circular, non-deployable antenna, and an on-board computer architecture and software amenable for advanced control and estimation algorithms), [2] one in-house development of a standard component (the CubeSat aluminium structure), and [3] a COTS scientific spectrometer for climate observation fitting in approximately 1U. The scientific goal is to demonstrate that valid atmospheric moisture measurements can be taken in such a small CubeSat and with the selected scientific instrument. It is noted that “boira” means fog in two of the official languages in Spain (Catalonian and Galician), and that by moisture measurements we refer to water vapor (WV), which is considered the most active greenhouse gas that permanently affects the Earth’s climate.

In this article, the first year of the program from inception to BDR is presented with emphasis on the steps taken to ensure student participation and engagement, set up the organizational structure to facilitate communication and progress, the funding and expert support (from an industry-academia collaboration), and lessons learnt.

Keywords:

Student CubeSat Program, Curriculum Design and Development, Links between Education and Research, University-Industry Cooperation.