UC3M ST3LLARsat1 “BOIRA” just completed the collocation meetings’ phase of ESA’s FYS-DB Final Design Review at ESA-ESTEC

15 Abr

As mentioned in our last news, the ST3LLARsat1 team submitted on 10 th of March the complete «CubeSat Project File» (CPF) as part of our participation in the ESA Fly-Your-Satellite Design Booster (FYS!-DB) program. During March and beginning of April, we received 37 Review Item Discrepancies (RIDs) from ESA experts, and on the 7 th of April a team of our students travelled to ESA-ESTEC (Noordwijk, The Netherlands) for a week to have face-to- face meetings with them and discuss the RIDS.

A total of 8 students from UC3M’s Master in Space Engineering (MISE), see Figure 1 , went to ESA-ESTEC. About half of the team are from the 2 nd year MISE “Integral Project” course, where the students work on consolidating our CubeSat work and take subsystem leadership roles, and half from the 1 st year, which are volunteers assigned to the different subsystems. This was done to facilitate the hand-over of responsibility and knowledge since the latter students will be taking over the subsystems’ leadership roles and continuing ST3LLARsat1 development within the 2024/25 “Integral Project” course.

The team reports that the four days at ESA-ESTEC was intense, full of activities, collaborations with various experts (see Figure 2), and networking opportunities. All of the subsystems were reviewed as well as the general concept of the mission, and the outcomes of these discussions will be implemented in the next version of our CPF and for the final presentation of our work at the end of May (which will close this first ESA FYS-DB program). The team also highlights that this event was an excellent opportunity to constructively debate with the other 4 university CubeSat teams participating in the FYS-DB program and share lessons learnt among all.A total of 8 students from UC3M’s Master in Space Engineering (MISE), see Figure 1 , went to ESA-ESTEC. About half of the team are from the 2 nd year MISE “Integral Project” course, where the students work on consolidating our CubeSat work and take subsystem leadership roles, and half from the 1 st year, which are volunteers assigned to the different subsystems. This was done to facilitate the hand-over of responsibility and knowledge since the latter students will be taking over the subsystems’ leadership roles and continuing ST3LLARsat1 development within the 2024/25 “Integral Project” course.

The travelling student team wants to thank the directors of the UC3M CubeSat program, Prof. Andrés Marcos, Dr. Diego Navarro-Tapia, prof. Grabiele Dessena and Dr. Andoni Moral for their support and trust in selecting them to represent ST3LLARsat1, and to the rest of the student team for their incredible work during this last year.

ST3LLARsat1 also wants to thank the ESA FYS-DB program for funding the travelling of our students to this event, and to ESA FYS!-DB’s technical officers, Dr. Loris Franchi, David de Palma, and Enol Vílchez Llamazares, for their continuous support during the18 months of the program.

Currently, ST3LLARsat1 is participated by 35 MISE graduate students and is led by Prof. Andrés Marcos (Beatriz Galindo Senior Distinguished Researcher) supported by Dr. Diego Navarro-Tapia (codirector of MA, ADCS, OBDH&C and SW teams), prof. Gabriele Dessena (codirector of STR, PAY, THRM and EPS) and Dr. Andoni Moral (INTA, AIV manager of ST3LLAR). ST3LLARsat is financially supported by the UC3M-SENER aerospace chair ST3LLAR, the aerospace department at UC3M, and prof. Marcos’ Beatriz Galindo awards from the Spanish Ministry of Science and from the Comunidad de Madrid (SPACEROBCON-CM-UC3M).