Last Year


Last year marked the third instalment of the Satellite Design Competition and it received a major and positive restructure and expansion. The first two years of the competition was purely online, where competing teams researched and identified an astronomy opportunity where cubesat technology offered a high-quality solution. They provided a high-level extensive design for one or more cubesats capable of carrying out that mission, in the form of a final extensive mission report was submitted.

Recent developments of the Satellite Design Competition have enabled an expansion to include a build phase, where competing teams have the opportunity to design and construct a nanosatellite payload, thanks to a new collaboration with Open Cosmos. The nanosatellite payload will be integrated on-board Open Cosmos’ 3U OpenKit platform and teams shall be scored over a series of tasks on a challenge day at the Harwell Science, Technology and Innovation Campus, Oxfordshire next summer. 

COVID-19 Changes

Due to the extreme circumstances of the rapidly evolving COVID-19 pandemic, the competition was restructured to accommodate the fact that students no longer had access to their university equipment and laboratories. As a result, the build and test phase of the competition was replaced with an extended mission design of a real Lunar cubesat mission, using their CDR report as a baseline and being required to use Open Cosmos' 3U satellite platform. Teams were provided with a new mission outline and mission requirements, which can be viewed in further depth below.

Instead of an in-person challenge day, UKSEDS livestreamed an online competition finale, where each of the SDC finalists presented their work done over the course of the 2019-2020 academic year. The finalists were:

  • University of Glasgow - Team GU Orbit (Winners)
  • Cranfield University - Team SELENE
  • Open University - Open CUBiverSATy