The CubeSat Project is an international collaboration of over 40 universities, high schools, and private firms developing picosatellites containing scientific, private, and government payloads. A CubeSat is a 10 cm cube with a mass of up to 1 kg. Javier Arribas, doctoral student of the Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya (CTTC), attended the CubeSat Workshop to present the work realized in the framework of the SALLESAT-1 project.

SALLESAT-1 is a project of La Salle University (Universitat Ramon Llull, URL) in which Javier Arribas, the technical director, has been working with a student team. This project aims at constructing radio amateurs' picosatellites.

This picosatellite belongs to an ESA's educational initiative initiated in May 2007 when an agreement was signed to include an educational payload on the Maiden Flight of the Vega launch vehicle from Kourou, French Guiana. The objective of this initiative is to offer the opportunity to the students of European universities intended to pursue their professional career in the space domain. The SALLESAT-1 could be one of the six CubeSats that will be included in the educational payload of the Maiden Flight tentatively scheduled in middle 2009.

The CubeSats will be launched in LEO terrestrial orbit. They are supposed to be able to work autonomously during one year, in order to gather telemetric information.

For additional information about the SALLESAT-1 project you can visit http://www.sallesat.org/.

For more information about Vega Maiden Flight CubeSat Workshop you can visit http://www.esa.int/esaED/SEM18OEMKBF_index_0.html.