University of Warwick Satellite Team (WUSAT)

About Us: The WUSAT (University of Warwick Satellite Engineering Team) Programme has developed out of a multi-disciplinary, 4th Year MEng project based in the School of Engineering, operating since 2006 under the leadership of Dr Bill Crofts. The programme is currently co-directed by Professor Julia Hunter-Anderson. The multi-disciplinary nature of the School of Engineering has enabled real-world hands-on educational space projects designed for ‘launch’. We take a concurrent engineering approach to our developments to enable sufficiently high quality products and ensure a smooth handover to the next student team for multi-year projects. Integral to our projects' success has been a wide collaboration with industry, with over 40 companies during the past 12 years, providing finance, equipment, training, software, and technical assistance. History: The Warwick University Satellite Team has been established since 2006. We completed six years of work (2006 to 2012) as the electrical power subsystem team on ESA’s moon orbiting satellite (ESMO). Since early 2012 we have been developing our own CubeSat satellite, a nanosatellite, typically a cube 0.1m wide, with a mass of less than 1.33kg. With the aim of enabling the continual development of CubeSat capabilities within the University of Warwick for space research. In May 2013, our first CubeSat (WUSAT-1) was launched via a high-altitude weather balloon to an altitude of 30km in order to test its systems in a harsh environment where the ambient temperature dropped to lower than -50°C, prior to future rocket launches. In March 2015, our second CubeSat (WUSAT-2) was launched on the REXUS-17 sounding rocket to an altitude of 87.5km. The CubeSat successful established a communication link performing solar-spectroscopy as it descended through the atmosphere. Our latest project, WUSAT-3, has also engaged a wider audience (gardeners, ecologists, beekeepers etc!) in the use of space to help solve real world problems.