SpaceTeamSat 1 (STS 1)

SpaceTeamSat 1 [TU Wien Space Team]

SpaceTeamSat1 (STS1) is an Austrian 1U CubeSat developed by the TU Wien Space Team at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) for Austria. The educational mission is intended to provide students with practical experience in satellite operations by allowing them to execute self-developed software on an orbiting spacecraft.

The primary purpose of STS1 is to serve as an educational platform for schools and students throughout Austria. Its onboard education payload enables participating AHS and BHS student teams to upload Python programs that control sensors and cameras, perform measurements, and acquire images and videos. After ground validation, the software is transmitted to the satellite via RF communications, executed on board, and the resulting data are returned through the mission ground station for analysis and interpretation by the students.

The satellite has been developed by the TU Wien Space Team, with the project beginning in August 2020. A dedicated ground station is operated for communications with the spacecraft, while a Mission Control Center at the TU Wien Space Team headquarters monitors telemetry, spacecraft status, and orbital position. The mission also encourages participating schools to establish their own simplified ground stations based on the SatNOGS infrastructure, allowing students to follow spacecraft operations even without transmission capability.

STS1 is a 1U CubeSat carrying a Raspberry Pi as its principal education payload computer. Various sensors and cameras are connected to the Raspberry Pi, providing a flexible platform for software-defined educational experiments and remote operation by participating schools. The mission architecture emphasizes end-to-end experience with space data communications, from experiment development and validation through spacecraft execution and data return.

As the first independently developed CubeSat mission of the TU Wien Space Team, STS1 places particular emphasis on building expertise in spacecraft development, mission operations, and the legal and regulatory aspects of satellite projects. The team follows formal review processes similar to those used on larger ESA and NASA missions in order to improve mission reliability and establish comprehensive documentation for future CubeSat developments.

The satellite is scheduled to launch on the second flight of the Spectrum rocket.