Teaming up to go above and beyond

UW Orbital is innovating outside of the requirements for student satellite contest By Carol Truemner Faculty of Engineering Fueled by passion for the final frontier, UW Orbital is building a satellite members hope will someday blast off into space. The year-old student team is working on CubeSat, a fully functioning satellite, for research in earth-centred orbit, called Eternium-III, and to compete in 2023's Canadian Satellite Design Challenge. The approximately 70 members, who are mainly engineering students, are developing a single three-unit Cubesat, which is about the size of three Rubik's Cubes stacked together or a milk container. A low-cost alternative to traditional multimillion-dollar satellite projects, a CubeSat allows smaller organizations like student teams to become involved in space initiatives. About a dozen post-secondary institutions from across the country will take part in next year's Canadian Satellite Design Challenge to be held in Ottawa. First prize is funding to launch the winning school's CubeSat. Supervised by George Shaker, a Waterloo professor crossed-appointed to electrical and computer engineering, and mechanical and mechatronics engineering, UW Orbital is a rebranded version of the University of Waterloo Satellite Team (WatSat), which operated from 2010-2018.