Small Satellite Building Event at Oxford

Posted on by John Holst

If you live near Harwell, Oxford, you have the opportunity to build a small satellite.  Satellite Applications Catapult is hosting this event, “Build Your Own Cubesat Weekend,” near the end of this March, on the 29 and 30th.

This event is meant to get ANYONE who has an interest in building a small satellite involved in actually building a very small satellite.  And they do mean anyone.  You don’t have to have a degree, and you don’t have to be technically inclined.  They do seem to want teams of people to show up.  And you need to make sure you and your mates will be there Saturday and Sunday.

Satellite Applications Catapult just want to show interested people how to build a cubesat.  The cubesats themselves are fairly tiny–about 10 cm (or nearly 4 inches) on a side, so weight shouldn’t be an issue for the non-muscular UK geeks.  Once you’ve built your cubesat, Satellite Applications Catapult seem to be stating that they’ll send it up with others, on a balloon to test it out.

If this does interest you, you don’t have much time until registration for the event closes:  1200 on 17 March 2014.  You can sign up for registration here.  Read the information, just in case I made a mistake on this post.  Then make sure you get your 10 Pound Sterling into them (per person) by 21 March.

It sounds like a blast, so all you folks thinking about attending, just go.  You just might learn a thing or two about space operations along the way.

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Published by John Holst

Ill-Defined Space is written by me, John Holst. ​If you’ve ever asked the following question, “What is this commercial space industry thing?” then welcome to my world. I will never have the answer to that question, but I do offer insights based on my industry experience and observations. I’ve tried defining, decrypting, deciphering, analyzing, and then translating the endless stream of the world’s space industry activities, policies, and press releases. I’ve experienced varying degrees of success in my attempts to do so. The upshot is that if you want thoughtful, occasionally useful, observations about the world’s space industry, then you may want to read my analyses. Boring, but potentially credibility-building information follows: I have a Master’s in Commercial Enterprise in Space through the Florida Institute of Technology. I was an undergrad at the University of Washington in Seattle, graduating from there with a degree in Journalism. My analysis of the space industry has been a definitive source for national lawmakers and departments, news outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Bloomberg, and the San Francisco Chronicle, publications like National Geographic, and National Public Radio. It’s been published in The Space Report: The Authoritative Guide to Global Space Activity from 2014-2023 (here’s a link to a 1Q19 promo copy). You can also see my work in Quilty Analytic’s series of LEO Broadband Reports. ​ I’ve worked in the United States Air Force, Missile Defense Agency, Cobham, Space Dynamics Laboratory, the Space Foundation, and Quilty Analytics. I focused on space operations in the first few and conducted space industry research and analysis with the last two.