EPFL Spacecraft Team

We have fantastic news! Our CHESS Pathfinder 1 Mission is officially heading to space! 🚀

We took part in the Space Universities CubeSat Challenge 2.0 organized by the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) and its Space University Administrative Committee (SUAC) in cooperation with the Chinese Society of Astronautics (CSA).

At last week's award ceremony at the IAC2023, we were selected as winners out of 75+ teams. This victory now grants us the opportunity to launch our CubeSat on a Chinese Launcher for free.

Congratulations also to the other winning team, Space Ranger from Beihang University. We are looking forward to the exchange with you.

We would also like to address our gratitude to eSpace and EPFL for their support.

Our Structure Team worked hard during the last weeks to build a complete replica of our future CHESS satellites.

While creating an elegant connection between ideas and a future reality, this model gathers all our teams in one.

We have already presented Bunny our OBC but did you know that it incorporates several memory cards? The main purpose of these cards is to store the FGPA (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) reconfiguration file to be able to reprogram it when in space! 🛰

In a critical period for us due to time constraints, Swissbit's reactivity allowed us to have enough SD cards in a record time. Thanks to their trust our OBC is ready to go to space with high quality memory cards.

🤝 We would like to thank them again for their support and for the high quality equipment they have provided to us!

We made it into .ch’s front page! 🎉

EST’s projects are getting more and more concrete, we are on the right path to launch!

Be prepared to see EST in space… 🛰️

check out the full story by following the link in our bio.

Today .aziz and revealed the HOBC project in the Swiss booth at . 🛰

Stay tuned, this is just the beginning...
Thanks to for moderating

📸Aziz Belkhiria, Matteo Andreas Lorenzoni, Dimitri Hollosi
🤝This is happening through a partnership with

Here comes our new mission : Bunny.

It was just revealed at in Paris with our partner .

Stay tuned !

EPFL Spacecraft Team is recruiting! Apply and join us now! 🛰️

This year, we’re launching 2 satellites into space, and we’re the very first student association to do so at EPFL. This means endless possibilities of projects and discoveries, and you can be part of the action!

Interested or just curious? An infosession will take place on September 29. We’re so thrilled to meet you there!
You can also apply directly by following the link in our bio.

Join the action. Join us now. 🛰️

Announcement 📢🛰

After 3 years of development of the CHESS space mission, a mission that consists of putting two 3u cubeSats in orbit for scientific purposes, the EPFL Spacecraft team, the team developing and coordinating CHESS, realized that because of the necessity of very specific skills in its members it would be a good idea to have a separate project which trains the new students interested in joining the development of CHESS. With this goal in mind, Cansat mission consists of a competition evaluating the development of a CanSat.
A CanSat is a miniature satellite integrated within the shape and volume of a can which is launched and deployed at high altitude and operates while in controlled descent.
The development of the satellite would last a full semester and each group (3-4 students) would have to develop its own. The development consists of designing, building, programming and testing the CanSat. All the CanSats will be launched and deployed at the end of the semester. For preparation purposes the students will be invited to 2 required workshops, which are basics of systems engineering and testing workshops, and 5 optional ones, those being embedded software, control electronics, recovery systems, telecommunication and power electronics workshops. Also, the teams will be in close contact with members from the main mission receiving feedback on their CanSat. There are a few required features the CanSats should have, like being able to measure pressure and temperature, but the teams are free to add all the features they like while respecting the requirements. Since they will be launched, the CanSats should also be able to withstand very high acceleration while remaining lightweight and precise.
The project would allow the participants to get familiar with not only the technical aspects of the development, giving them insight on what subsystem they are more comfortable with, but also the procedure behind missions like CHESS.

Last Friday, we have conducted the PDR (Preliminary Design Review) for the CHESS Mission with reviewers from all around the globe.

The team had the opportunity to present the generated concepts for every subsystem and discuss it with experts from the space domain.

This milestone marks the end of Phase B and the beginning of Phase C, where the received feedback shall be implemented to develop the detailed design in preperation for the CDR.

We would like to thank Universty of Bern , ETH Zürich and HSLU for trusting us with their payloads.

At the EPFL Spacecraft Team, we organize concurrent design sessions where all the engineers from the different subsytems are gathered to solve system-wide problems.
Engineering of complex systems requires collaboration between many different domains and the ability to share and exchange engineering models, designs, data, and documents. Our approach helps us accelerate schedules and solve problems efficiently.

The Systems Engineers at EPFL Spacecraft Team have recently organized a Data-Driven Design Hackathon that focused on the digitalization of the concept generation process using Valispace: A tool used by the CHESS mission to design the 3U Cubesats.

The teams had the opportunity to analyze the requirements, brainstorm, choose a concept and implement it on Valispace.

The hackathon enabled the participants to discover concurrent design techniques and use the modern tools to propagate the changes from the component level to the general system while tracing back to the initial requirements.

We want to thank Maria Peres from  for empowering our engineers with such valuable tools!

Here is the team ! 🛰🎉

At spacecraft team we are almost 50 people splited in several poles, working together to launch our two cubesats (Chess 1 and Chess 2). See on our website the whole team and all of our pole !

Baby CHESS is groing up… It will celebrate it’s PDR soon !

In our system engineering pole leader arms you can see the mass model of our spacecraft: it has the same weight than the real one and also it’s the same size (without the solar panels). We are building two cubesats of 3u 🛰💫

Progress meeting of yesterday !
During this one all of our poles presented them achievements and their goals for the end of the semester and for the preliminary design review of December.

Chess mission is moving forward well 🛰💫

The long await first prototype of the OBC (On-Board-Computer) arrived! This means we'll be able to start with the first tests in the coming weeks.
Big thank you goes to who sponsored this board 🙏

An FPGA builds the core part of this PCB. It is connected to a PIC, which will allow for reprogramming the FPGA while the system is in space! Furthermore a FRAM will be included, which is a new type of RAM especially resistant to cosmic rays.

~Weekly subsystem~

Mission design is the basis of the mission, at the beginning it fixes all the important steps of the mission, and defines what the satellites will have to do during their lives. In fact it performs the preliminary analysis and then defines the parameters of the mission (feasibility, orbital parameters, collision risk…).
It’s only theoretical and simulation work, there is no hardware at all and it’s mostly about system engineering and orbital mechanics with some other aspects of physics for some points like radiation analysis and communication windows.

Following the failure of the ambitious Russian mission Mars 96, in which the European Space Agency was involved, the agency decides to launch its own spacecraft to the red planet. Mars express is the first planetary mission attempted by ESA and it consists in two parts: The Mars Express orbiter, which aims to study Mars environment (especially, as our spacecraft, the atmosphere), and a lander, Beagle 2 to perform exobiology and geochemistry research.
It was launch using a Soyus-FG/fregat rocket on the 2nd of June 2003.
Beagle 2 has never been heard again, but the Mars Express orbiter performed to give us precious informations about Mars: confirmation of the presence of liquid water, nature of the polar ice caps, atmosphere composition and solar wind interactions. It also sent us some remarkable images of Phobos, the biggest Mars's moon.

~Weekly subsystem~

The structure pole manages basically how all the subsystems are linked together in order to make the mission work, by this way it gives a great overview of all the cubesats. It aims at configuring all the subsystems into one satellite, as well as analysing the vibration and thermal behaviour during the mission: The structure must sustain the space environment and make sure the elements are well fixed and remain within their temperature ranges.

The mechanical interfacing between all the subsystems is carried out checking that there is enough room to fit everything. Since most structural elements are bought, a finite element analysis must be performed for the vibration and thermal parts. Currently the design and assembly is still works on, the vibration analysis was made and the thermal one is being carried out.

~Weekly subsystem~

The role of the Electrical Power System (EPS) is to generate, store and distribute the electricity produced by the solar panels.
It’s core component is an electrical power supply which is a power distribution unit. It’s composed of three modules which are the power control circuit, the photovoltaic panel and the battery.
It’s an essential and critical subsystem in the cubesat, allowing for the generation, management and distribution of energy to all of the components. That’s why it is important to test the board, the batteries and the solar panel deployment system to make sure everything is well configured and ready to fly.
Finally an estimation of State of Charge for the batteries should be made to ensure that the system lasts the full 2 years of the Mission.

-------Weekly subsystem-------

The On-Board-Computer (OBC) controls all the subsystems, collects their data and redirects it to the ground station. It connects to the other subsystems via multiple communication pathways (busses) controlled by a microcontroller or a processor using peripherals. It’ll also implement failure management to keep the satellite alive.

It touches quite a lot of different domains with the most important ones being electronics, hardware design and embedded programming.

The final design depends a lot on whether or not we’re flying a housemade or a commercial off the shelf OBC. That’s why we are implementing a prototype of our housemade OBC and evaluating a commercial solution.

Everyone say hi to these hi-tech beauties 😍! We just received a few purchased parts for our satellites 🛰

1st picture - this is the cube computer that will be used for test purposes by our ADCS team. (It will be connected to sensors and reaction wheels) 

2nd picture - the On-Board Computer! This big guy, with the help of the OBC team, will be responsible for connecting different subsystems of the CubeSat.

3rd picture - our EPS (Electrical Power System) responsible for managing the satellite’s energy use.

Thank you and for the goodies!

-------Weekly subsystem-------

The Attitude Determination and Control Subsystem (ADCS) is responsible for the determination and the control of the satellite’s orientation in space. It’s able to orient the satellite in a desired way.

The orientation can be determined by the sensors that are on the satellite (such as sun sensors, magnetometers, earth IR sensors). Once we know the orientation of the satellite, we change it by using a set of actuators (3-axis reaction wheels, 3-axis magnetorquers ). By this way the satellite can also change its mode without any command sent from the ground station, for example upon reaching a certain point, the satellite will orient itself towards the Earth to send data.

For the ADCS subsystem we used commercial (off-the-shelf) components, therefore most of our work focuses on testing different flight scenarios and seeing if we can reach the desired attitude for all possible flight cases.

The CHESS satellites are taking shape 👀...
More to come soon, Follow us to stay updated 😉

Exactly 63 years ago, on the 4th of October 1957, the USSR successfully launched the first ever man-made satellite on an orbit around Earth: Sputnik-1 (can be translated as a "satellite" but also as a "traveling companion"). It simply consisted of a metallic sphere (585mm diameter, 2mm thickness) and two pairs of antennas. The satellite could only emit a radio signal that was easily detectable, even by radio amateurs. It orbited for three weeks before its' batteries died and then for two more months before it fell back into the atmosphere.
Sputnik's success was a shock to the whole world and could be one of the events that sparked the USA-USSR Space Race during the 20th century, pushing both nations to constantly innovate and outdo themselves.
Today, CHESS🛰 mission brings together students throughout Switzerland for a similar goal: to send satellites to space, to innovate and to show the world what we can do!

4 years ago, the Rosetta spacecraft (2nd pic) hard landed on the comet 67P/Tchourioumov-Guérassimenko (1st pic). Launched in 2014 from Guyanese space center, with an A***n 5, the goal was to study comet origins, and collect as much data as possible on this mysterious and inspiring phenomenon.
This small spacecraft achieved a lot during the 2 years spent orbiting 67P: First spacecraft orbiting a comet, First lander set on a comet (with Philae), and some huge discoveries with the on-board mass spectrometer ROSINA (3 and 4th pics). Developped at Uni Bern, it's the combination of 3 instruments: the Double Focusing Mass Spectrometer (DFMS), the Reflectron Time-of-Flight (RTOF) mass spectrometer, and the Comet Pressure Sensor (COPS). It's also our playload's big brother. Indeed, CubeSatTOF (5 and 6th pics) is 10times smaller which is a huge breakthrough, and developed by Uni Bern too. The goal here is to survey the atmosphere's upper layer composition, and in the end create better earth models. CubeSatTOF is also a proof of concept: it’s now possible to send mass spectrometers as a cubesat playload (10x10x30cm). This miniaturization masterpiece opens new horizons to human space exploration.
---------
credits to ESA/UniBern

The CHESS mission main payload, the time of flight mass spectrometer provided by UniBern, is defining the main scientific objectives of the mission. The mass spectrometer will be measuring the Earth's atmosphere by studying the composition of the exosphere (the uppermost layer, where the atmosphere thins out and merges with interplanetary space) and its temperature, its variation and escape rate. All of this will help measure chemical sputtering in LEO orbits, climate change and even earthquakes on Earth. Last but not least, it will perform a technology demonstration of the mass spectrometer (evaluate its TRL) for future extraterrestrial mission!

As classes are starting tomorrow, the EPFL Spacecraft Team wishes you good luck with the new semester! And stay tuned to know more about our mission throughout the year 😎

********** (en français) **********

Le poids utile de la mission CHESS, le spectromètre de masse à temps de vol fournit par UniBern, définit les principaux objectives de la mission. L'appareil mesurera l'atmosphère terrestre en étudiant la composition de l'exosphère (la couche la plus haute de l'atmosphère, là où elle s'émincit et ressemble le plus au vide interplanétaire) et sa température, ainsi que son taux de variation et d'échappement. Tout cela permettra d'étudier la pulvérisation chimique pour des orbite LEO, le changement climatique et même les tremblements de terre. Finalement, ce sera une démonstration technologique du spectromètre de masse (évaluer son TRL, ie niveau de maturité technologique) pour de futures missions extraterrestres.

Les cours reprenant demain, la EPFL spacecraft team vous souhaite bonne chance avec le ce nouveau semestre! Suivez nos pages pour en savoir plus sur la mission le long de l'année 😎😙

Finally we made it to the end of the revision! We hope that your exams went well despite the particular circumstances, and most of all that you are healthy and safe 😷

The EPFL Spacecraft Team never stopped working on their CHESS mission, and we are super proud of the progress made! Here in this post picture you can see how the Cubesats will be placed in orbit based on our studies up to now. We have one Cubesat on a circular SSO, i.e. sun synchronous orbit, which means that the orbital plane will have always the same inclination with respect to the Sun, throughout the whole year. The second Cubesats instead will be on an elliptic orbit, coplanar to the first, which will allow the payloads to gather scientific data at different altitudes. We are working on finding a launcher which will allow us to send both Cubesats at the same time. This is one of the great advantages of using small satellites like Cubesats: multiple satellites can be sent in orbit with one launch, which reduces a lot the cost of the mission.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Les révisions arrivent enfin à leur fin! On espère que vos examens se sont bien passés dans ces circonstances particulières, et que vous êtes tous en bonne santé 😷

La EPFL Spacecraft Team n'a jamais arrêté de travailler sur la mission CHESS, et nous sommes très fiers de notre progrès! Dans la photo vous pouvez voir comment les Cubesats seront placés en orbite en se basant sur nos travaux jusqu'à maintenant. Nous avons un Cubesat sur une SSO circulaire, i.e. Sun Sunchronous Orbit, ce qui veut dire que le plan orbital aura la même inclinaison par rapport au Soleil, pendant toute l'année. Le second Cubesat sera quant à lui sur une orbite elliptique, coplanaire à la première, ce qui permettra aux poids utiles de prendre des mesures sur des altitudes différentes. On cherche un lanceur qui nous permettra d'envoyer les deux Cubesats en même temps. Ceci est un des avantages d'utiliser des petits satellites: plusieurs peuvent être lancés en orbite en un lancement, ce qui réduit considérablement le coût de la mission.