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.