“This dissembled CubeSat has all its subsystems easily accessible,” explains ESA Young Graduate Trainee Malte Bargholz, working on the FlatSat project. “This includes its on-board computer, radio and telemetry, its attitude and orbit control system, battery and power system and satellite navigation receiver, along with additional slots to plug in external hardware”.

“This setup allows us to access and test everything in a straightforward way, compared to a normal satellite where everything ends up tightly integrated and packed together – especially in the case of miniaturised CubeSats. We can also try out new approaches for operating such missions, and test the interoperability of various commercial CubeSat components.”