Our student group is involved in the educational programs of the European Space Agency (ESA) since 2006. The experiences gathered during this period are inspired us to launch own space projects. One of our main technical supporters, the Space Research Group of BME quite long time ago has already come up with the idea of developing an own satellite. At the beginning of 2008 a small-satellite developers’ workshop organized in the ESA centre in the Netherlands gave us the opportunity to finally kick off the project of developing the first Hungarian satellite.
The satellite meets the requirements of the so called CubeSat standard, sizes 10*10*10cm and its maximum weight is 1kg. It’s a big challenge to develop such small satellite which is capable of working with high reliability in space environment. Furthermore, the other important factor is the low budget we have. This determines the selection of components, affects the system level considerations and the whole project including the launch possibilities as well.
At present nearly 20 students are working on the project.