COMPASS-1 CubeSat Project: Status and Lessons Learned
- Paper number
IAC-05-E1.1.08
- Author
Mr. Artur Scholz, University of Applied Sciences Aachen / FH Aachen, Germany
- Year
2005
- Abstract
The COMPASS-1 picosatellite project has been initiated by students of the University of Ap-plied Sciences Aachen with support from the German Aerospace Centre (DLR). It is coordi-nated and carried out by a team of 14 students from different semesters and faculties. Main driver for the project was the students’ desire to gain valuable working experience and the practical application of the theory taught at university. The project has made a good process and its status will be presented in brief to give an overview on the achievements and results. Main purpose of this paper however is to report about the proceeding of the project itself. During the development phase of the satellite, it revealed that such an educational undertaking has to have a stable foundation in order to have a smooth progress. This foundation constitutes of two important key elements: an interesting mission that is worth to go for and can attract external sponsorship and (very crucial for student activities!) to have a good organiza-tion of both, the work to be done and the people assigned to it. The paper will deal with the challenges and problems that our project had faced and endured during its progress in order to provide others with an essential guideline, addressing topics that are often neglected in the teachings of engineering studies: such as how to initiate a project, what organizational structure to be used, key elements on how to keep a project running and other aspects. The authors’ intention is to inspire students to seize their opportunities through the use of project work and to give educators and industrials an idea on project assignment from a students’ view. Furthermore the hardware models are being presented to have a foundation for discussions and explanation among interested conference attendees.
- Abstract document