The UNISAT program: Lessons learned and achieved results

More than ten years experience in hands-on space education has been achieved at Scuola di Ingegneria Aerospaziale of Universita di Roma "la Sapienza", where the UNISAT program was established in the early nineties. The students participating in this program are involved in a microsatellite design, manufacturing, test, launch and operation in orbit activity, from initial mission concept to operation in orbit. The microsatellite program develops in a two years timeline, fitting with the graduate student program curricular activity at Scuola di Ingegneria Aerospaziale. Four microsatellites have been launched every other year since 2000 from the Baikonour Cosmodrome by the DNEPR LV. In this way there was the opportunity to exploit the UNISAT platform to perform small scientific and technological experiments in orbit. Besides education, a main goal of the UNISAT program is testing in orbit commercial off-the-shelf components, which allow to keep the program cost low and compatible with the University research budget. The main spacecraft subsystems, including the in orbit technological and scientific experiments, and the ground station operations are briefly described in the paper, focussing on the education and research aspects. (c) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.