Friday morning focused on CubeSat Constellations, Future Technology on CubeSats and Technology Demonstrations on CubeSats. These sessions included presentations on the NANOBED mission lab and a presentation on Planet Labs, who are aiming to be able to take daily photos of earth. During lunch we spent some time looking at the Industrial Exhibits. These included an exhibit from GomSpace who built several of our boards and an exhibit from Electronic Systems Laboratory who makes the ADCS designed by Surrey Space.

In the afternoon we attended sessions on CubeSat Design, Integration, and Testing. This included a presentation from our project manager, Charles Nokes, on The First University of Alberta Satellite: Ex Alta-1. Charles’ presentation focused on the details of Ex Alta-1. Ex Alta-1 is a 3U CubeSat designed to study Space Weather. It has has 3 payloads: a multi-needle Langmuir Probe, a Digital Fluxgate magnetometer, and a radiation dosimeter. We will also be testing the Athena On-Board Computer to qualify it for use on future missions.

This conference has provided us with many learning experiences and we have met many people who provide us with advice. It has been exceptionally helpful to gain advice and knowledge in this area to help us build our CubeSat. We would like to thank the University of Alberta for their assistance in travel costs and QB50 and the ESA for the opportunity to attend this conference and present our findings. We would also like to thank all of the presenters, and the University of Liege for providing us with a space to learn!