UC3M ST3LLARsat1 “BOIRA” News: a fantastic visit to ESA-ESTEC, a new logo, and our 2U configuration!!!

We have had a busy semester at UC3M with our CubeSat program and it is now a good time before leaving for a well-deserved holiday break to review the progress and achievements by our ST3LLARsat1 students.

First, we have now a well-oiled (after all we do have pizza once a month in our meetings) consolidated team composed of 25 (1st and 2nd year) MISE students, plus 1 PhD student, and 2 faculty members. You can see part of the team during one of our biweekly face-to-face meetings below.

Second and our WHOA! Factor, at the beginning of November seven of our students attended ESA’s main space technology development centre in the Netherlands (ESA-ESTEC) for a week of classes and practical training as part of our participation in ESA’s “Fly Your Satellite Design Booster” programme. They reported to us a very intense learning week, full of activities, and networking opportunities … and the rest of us are all full of healthy envy after seeing their pictures (thanks to ESA for kindly providing them). We did get a lot of good advice on our project, which we already have put to good use. You can find more information on the visit and program at ESA’s Education webpage: ESAs_FYSBoosterTrainingWeek. 

Finally, we have a new logo courtesy of our more creative engineering ST3LLARsat1 students (see below). Also, we have consolidated our mission and subsystems leading to our choice of 2U CubeSat configuration and to the selection of several of our hardware components, which we aim to procure during the first quarter of next year to have an early start on the assembly, integration, and testing (AIT) phase.

The UC3M ST3LLARsat1 “BOIRA” program is led by Prof. Andrés Marcos (Beatriz Galindo Senior Distinguished Researcher) from the aerospace engineering department at UC3M with support from Mrs. Alison Ponche (Doctoral candidate at the department).