From thin-air to flat-sat in 12 months: the Twentesat student project

TwenteSat aims to build a twin-satellite interferometer in space, a research satellite system in preparation of the OLFAR project. The project will be completely done by students that work on a voluntary basis. The target is to have a flat-sat of at least one of the satellites ready in a short timeframe, the reason for this is the wish to get relatively quick results as most students can’t work on the project for a long time, ideal would be 12 months A.K.A. 1 year of study. The first research on the project was done by September 2013 and most of the recruiting and acquiring finances still has to be done at this point in time. As a result of this the student team will face several problems. They have to adapt to working with a quickly changing group as the Twentesat student project experiences a generally high workforce turnover, and they need speedy access to money while still being highly unknown to the outside world. This paper analyses the group’s activities and future plans on how to achieve their goal of quickly building a flat-sat. As it is not possible to trust on the fact that students will stay involved for a long time projects will have to be divided in small tasks that students can start on quickly, won’t take too long, and can be done independently from other tasks. This will help future educational student projects to launch more successfully and with less problems.