Ongoing Projects
Here you can read more about our current or past projects. There have been other student projects related to space technology, but these have not been done under the Student Satellite Foundation.
SUTS
SUTS (Strategic Upgrades Testing Satellite) is the smallest satellite developed in Estonia. SUTS is a collaboration project with students from TalTech, the University of Tartu, and other schools and universities all over the country.
Our mission in developing a novel satellite form factor was to explore technology miniaturisation and create a reusable satellite platform. The SUTS platform will support future scientific and technological experiments.
Our partners Skudo, Golbriak Space, and TalTech are developing the satellite’s technical payloads.
SUTS is planned to launch in 2028.
The project is financed from the state budget, from the funds of research and development activities.
CubeSat Command Module
The project aims to create a CubeSat control and data handling system equipped with an RF system-on-a-chip (RFSoC) that enables high-performance computing and radio communication.
The selected RFSoC includes an application processing unit powerful enough to run embedded Linux to process payload data and AI algorithms, and a real-time core for performing time-critical tasks, such as triggering satellite thrusters at a fixed interval.
The command module is intended to improve our future CubeSat platform’s performance to be on par with available commercial solutions, increase spacecraft autonomy, and provide a reconfigurable test bench for in-orbit software validation.
The project is financed from the state budget, from the funds of research and development activities. 99,812.20€
Previous Student Satellite Projects
ESTCube-2
The ESTCube-2 mission aimed to demonstrate deorbiting with plasma brake technology and qualify a deep-space nanospacecraft platform for future missions that will use the electric solar wind sail. Sadly, due to a deployer malfunction, the ESTCube-2 mission came to an abrupt end on the 9th of October 2023.
Link to the webpage
Space Festival
The space festival “100 km from space” took place on July 12, 2022, in Tallinn, Telliskivi Creative City. During the festival people could meet with the top players in the Estonian space scene, engage with scientists and entrepreneurs who presented their science throughout the day. The main guest of the festival was the Matthias Maurer, an astronaut from the European Space Agency.
OTHER ESTONIAN STUDENT SATELLITES
In addition to the satellites developed by the Student Satellite organisation, Estonian students have also worked in other satellite projects. While these initiatives were not carried out under the Student Satellite organization banner, they played a crucial role in inspiring both students and universities, laying the foundation for future developments in the field.
ESTCube-1
ESTCube-1 was the first Estonian mission to develop the space technology competence and demonstrate the electric solar wind sail. Launched on May 7, 2013 on-board the Vega rocket, the ESTCube-1 lifetime spanned two years of experiments, troubleshooting and improvement of on-board systems.
Koit & Hämarik
The students from the Tallinn University of Technology worked on two identical nano-satellites – Koit (‘Dawn’) and Hämarik (‘Dusk’). The mission of the student satellites was primarily Earth Observation using color and near-infrared cameras.