CubeSat Project Ideas

Deploy a 2U CubeSat with a low-resolution multispectral camera to capture cloud cover, vegetation indices, and land surface temperature over your campus region. Downlink imagery via UHF to a student-built ground station.

Build a 1U CubeSat that acts as a store-and-forward relay for IoT sensor nodes on the ground. Collect data packets from remote environmental sensors and relay them to a central ground station on each orbital pass.

Fly a radiation dosimeter payload to measure total ionizing dose and single-event effects along the orbital path. Map radiation intensity versus altitude, latitude, and proximity to the South Atlantic Anomaly.

Deploy a TinyML model on the satellite's onboard processor to classify captured images (clouds, land, ocean, fire) before downlink. Reduce data transmission by only sending images that meet classification criteria.

Design and fly a custom deployable solar panel mechanism on a 2U CubeSat. Validate deployment reliability, power generation improvement over body-mounted cells, and mechanical performance in microgravity.

Fly a sealed biological payload to study the effects of microgravity on seed germination, bacterial growth, or protein crystallization. Monitor conditions with temperature, humidity, and optical sensors.

Develop and validate a custom ADCS using magnetorquers and an IMU. Implement B-dot detumbling and nadir-pointing algorithms, then compare on-orbit performance to simulation predictions.

Use a thermal infrared sensor to detect heat anomalies associated with wildfires. Process imagery on-board to generate alerts and downlink only confirmed hotspot data to reduce bandwidth requirements.

Build a 1U CubeSat carrying a linear transponder for amateur radio operators. Enable cross-band communication (VHF/UHF) and provide a beacon for amateur satellite tracking and educational outreach.

Receive AIS signals from maritime vessels and use on-board ML to detect anomalous behavior (dark shipping, route deviations). Downlink only flagged events to minimize bandwidth and support maritime domain awareness.

Design a deployable drag sail that accelerates orbital decay for end-of-life deorbiting. Validate deployment mechanism reliability and measure actual deorbit rate versus predictions to support space sustainability efforts.

Fly a magnetometer and particle detector to measure geomagnetic field variations and charged particle flux in LEO. Correlate data with solar activity to contribute to space weather research and forecasting models.

Benchmark classical and post-quantum cryptographic algorithms in the space radiation environment. Monitor memory bit-flip rates across multiple memory technologies and broadcast signed random numbers as a space randomness beacon.

Capture low-resolution Earth imagery and downlink photos via UHF to a student-built ground station. Use images for outreach, attitude verification, and as training data for future on-board image classification experiments.

Receive ADS-B signals from commercial aircraft to detect and log air traffic over oceanic and remote regions where ground radar has gaps. Generate aircraft detection heat maps and downlink compressed position reports.

Load commercial SRAM, FRAM, MRAM, and Flash memory chips with known data patterns and monitor single-event upset rates correlated with orbital position. Produce a reliability dataset for the semiconductor and space communities.

Fly a precision timing payload that disciplines a local oscillator to GPS signals and measures holdover drift during GPS outages and eclipse transitions. Validate high-accuracy onboard timekeeping for future geolocation missions.

Build and fly a photodiode-based sun sensor to validate attitude determination algorithms. Compare on-orbit measurements against simulation predictions and the onboard ADCS to calibrate pointing accuracy.

Monitor GPS signal quality metrics across orbital passes to detect and map regions of GPS interference or jamming on the ground. Generate global interference heat maps from accumulated data without geolocating individual emitters.

Fly a narrowband UHF receiver to characterize the RF environment in wildlife tracking frequency bands and attempt to receive signals from a high-power ground test transmitter. Lay the groundwork for future space-based animal migration monitoring.

Distribute temperature, humidity, and pressure sensors across the spacecraft to map thermal gradients through sunlight and eclipse transitions. Validate thermal models and provide environmental telemetry for all other payload experiments.

Run a lightweight anomaly detector on housekeeping telemetry (power, thermal, ADCS, comms) to flag outliers and trending failures. Compare ML alerts against simple threshold rules and downlink only flagged windows for analysis.

Capture low resolution images and run a simple onboard model to score frames for usefulness (cloud cover, motion blur, target present). Downlink only top scored images plus compressed thumbnails to reduce bandwidth.

Fuse magnetometer, gyroscope, and coarse sun sensor data with a compact ML model to estimate attitude. Compare accuracy and stability against a classical filter approach using the same sensors.

Collect short bursts of IQ samples (or RSSI based features) and classify events like interference, beacon presence, or modulation changes. Downlink only event metadata and a small sample window for verification.

Implement end to end message authentication for uplink commands and downlink telemetry using modern signatures and keyed hashes. Validate reject rates for malformed or replayed commands and publish a student friendly reference implementation.

Demonstrate secure boot with a hardware root of trust, then perform an authenticated firmware update in orbit. Verify rollback protection, version pinning, and recovery behavior after an interrupted update.

Generate random numbers onboard using a hardware RNG, continuously self test health metrics, and broadcast signed randomness blocks. Evaluate how radiation and temperature correlate with RNG performance and error flags.

Build a small intrusion detection layer that learns normal ground station command cadence and flags unusual sequences, timing, or source identifiers. Store audit logs onboard and downlink summaries for review.

Implement store and forward networking between multiple ground stations and the satellite using a DTN style protocol. Measure delivery success, latency, and packet loss under intermittent contact windows.

Estimate upper atmosphere density by combining onboard accelerometer measurements with orbital decay and attitude data. Produce a dataset showing density variation across sunlight and eclipse and compare to public models.