Nanosatellites

14 I-3cNanosatellites as Educational Projects

Merlin F. Barschke

Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany

14.1 Introduction

In the early 1980s, universities started to investigate the capabilities of very small satellites to exploit financial advantages that originated from their reduced complexity and the lower associated launch costs. Gradually, such projects were discovered to be excellently suited to provide hands-on education to engineering students. Nowadays, a large number of universities conduct educational satellite projects, which significantly changed the role of nanosatellites in the space sector. Hence, the present understanding of nanosatellites' capability to fulfill tasks that required much bigger spacecraft in the past, or even to open the way for entirely new application areas, owes much to the educational satellite projects of the past decades.

14.2 Satellites and Project-based Learning

Problem-based learning as a method for engineering education is widely regarded as both successful and innovative, as students generally show greater motivation with this learning model. Project organized learning as a specific form of problem-based learning is especially useful in engineering education. Here, the students work in teams to apply the theoretical knowledge gained in the lectures on practical engineering problems. Besides the higher motivation of students, such projects are ideally suited to support the development of ...