Educational value and lessons learned from the AAU-CubeSat project

Abstract

In September 2001 Aalborg university started the AAU-cubesat project that reached it climax when the student built satellite was launched into space on the 30th of June 2003 on top of a former Russian ICBM. AAU-cubesat was among the first five satellites to be launched that are built within the cubesat concept that prescribes a satellite with dimensions 10/spl times/10/spl times/10 cm and mass one kilogram. These constraints clearly limits the possibilities for the satellite in terms of possible scientific missions, but on the other hand: by building satellites of this size a technology push is created that in the future will help to reduce the size of both scientific and commercial satellites and thus help to drive down the launch cost. In this paper described the overall architecture of the AAU-cubesat in order to show what a pico-satellite can be and demonstrate all the fields of engineering which must come together to built a student satellite like the AAU-cubesat. Results from the operation phase will be stated, and recommendations on further work on pico-satellite designs will be given. In addition as the project has been carried through by students then the educational value of the project will be addressed as well.