ESTCube Program

Discussion

By Lucas Lemos and Chris Giotitsas:

“The Estonian Student Satellite Program (ESTCube Program) is a locally adapted version of the CubeSat Program. Through this program, a workforce of volunteers is recruited to work on ESTCube CubeSats (Noorma et al., 2013; Slavinskis, Reinkubjas, et al., 2015). Tartu Observatory (TO) and the University of Tartu (UT) have been the main hosts of the program. Since 2018, the former is an institute within the latter. They provide working space, labs, and testing facilities (Iakubivskyi et al., 2020). Several ESTCube members have become department leaders, researchers, and engineers in these host institutions.

Typically, college-level students join the ESTCube Program, but the recruitment process starts earlier. To inform about space science and their work, ESTCube members organize and take part in several activities: workshops, presentations, and science outreach events. During summers, there are special activities to train high-school students. The Summer Academy brings together high school and university students to TO (Janson, 2018). There, students can participate in ESTCube activities through the Science Camp (Teaduslaager) and the Science Task Force (Teadusmalev). The ESTCube Program provides hands-on education for students, complementing their formal education. Students work on goal-oriented tasks related to some aspect of the CubeSat. Responsibilities, the difficulty level of the work tasks, and other features are decided on aptitudes, capacities, experience, and disponibility of the students. Team leaders supervise and coordinate students, but students are expected to work independently on their work tasks. Recruitees often write their theses (BSc, MSc, or PhD) on some aspect of the CubeSat. The first satellite produced by ESTCube, called ESTCube-1, has resulted in over 30 BSc, 20 MSc, and 2 PhD defended theses (Slavinskis, Reinkubjas, et al., 2015). ESTCube members are also involved in other peripheral activities, often as amateurs. Passion for science and technology is their core intrinsic motivation, along with meeting like-minded people. Their areas of interest include radio communication, robotics, science Olympiads, hackathons, programming, game development, or desktop fabrication. For example, an ESTCube member has created an online database on nanosatellites (nanosats.eu). This database was originally supported by an EU grant, but since 2014 it is regularly updated every 2 or 3 months.

During the development of their ESTCube-1 (2008- 2013), the ESTCube community did not formalize the initiative into any legal form. ESTCube members were tied by shared values, having a common goal: to produce and launch a CubeSat, making Estonia a space nation (Noorma et al., 2013). They envision space exploration as an activity that should benefit humanity as a whole. Membership is open for everyone who shares their vision and their values and is will ing to contribute to the project with inclusive community development prioritized over efficiency.

Community building on shared values is crucial for ESTCube community persistence through the long CubeSat development periods. The principal stress factor came from working with an accelerated schedule after accepting an earlier-than-expected launch opportunity from Arianespace (Slavinskis, Pajusalu, et al., 2015). The iterative prototyping of satellites is only possible through successive prototypes and models of the flight-ready satellite. Once a CubeSat is in orbit, there is no possibility to bring it down to Earth for hardware improvements or reparations. Simulations (digital models) and physical tests in testing facilities (e.g., testing functions, systems integration tests, and environmental tests) are performed to test the technology. ESTCube members report strong life-long bonds with other team members, developed through years of close collaboration—especially during the latest stages of development of ESTCube-1.

In the case of ESTCube, researchers, engineers, and space enthusiasts were the instigators. ESTCube is “a combination of various initiatives—education, science, technology, as well as student and volunteer organizations” (Kalnina et al., 2018, p. 2). The ESTCube community does not own fixed assets or property: the host organizations provide working space and lab access.

To this day, ESTCube does not have one principal source of funding. Several outlets are used to finance the costs of manufacturing technology for the CubeSats, the launching costs, and to financially support its members. The European Commission, The European Space Agency (ESA), and Estonian grants and scholarships (Lätt et al., 2014), a crowd funding campaign (Kalnina et al., 2018), donors, or sponsor ships, are some of the funding sources that ESTCube has been tapping through the years. The complexity of ESTCube’s organizational model gradually expanded. Having an international network of partners, over 200 students divided into a larger number of working tasks, involvement in international regulatory bod ies, partnering with ESA, among other areas of activity, become an administrative burden. The organization could not operate much longer without a formal legal structure. At the beginning of 2017, 32 new and old members of ESTCube founded the Estonian Student Satellite Foundation. The initial objective of ESTCube was to build one CubeSat and launch it into orbit. The mission was accomplished in 2013, when ESTCube-1 was launched into Earth's orbit. The initiative was refounded after launching ESTCube-1. The transition period from ESTCube senior leaders to the new generation leading ESTCube-2 satellite took approximately 2 years. Currently, the second CubeSat (ESTCube-2) is in an advanced development phase under the guidance of the Estonian Student Satellite Foundation. ESTCube-1 provided Estonia with the space technology proficiency needed to attain permanent membership status in the ESA. The status of Estonia as a member in ESA brought new opportunities for ESTCube and its host organizations to expand their involvement in new activities, both locally and internationally. The same year that Estonia joined ESA, ESTCube-1 micro-camera was selected to be a payload of the European Student Earth Orbiter satellite (the third mission within ESA's Education Satellite Program; Noorma, 2016). Also, in 2019 Estonia was invited to participate in ESA's “Comet Interceptor” mission. ESTCube also influences some decisions of its hosting institutions. Acquisition of lab testing machinery, rearrangement of departments and academic curricula, selection of grants and project proposals take into consideration the ESTCube needs and outcomes. Producing knowledge and technology in-house is one of the priorities of ESTCube and its hosting organizations. However, procuring the machinery to manufacture space technology was never an option. Instead, a network of exter nal partners is used to produce components designed and developed by ESTCube members."

(https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/02704676211041900)