AcubeSAT is a multidisciplinary project by SpaceDot, a team led by ambitious students and researchers primarily from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. The space mission is realized with the support of the European Space Agency (ESA) Education Office. The team is one of the three accepted in the “Fly Your Satellite! 3” ESA programme.
Our space mission was birthed from a question sparked in our hearts: Is there any way to perform large-scale biology-centered research on outer space, while being outside of the International Space Station (ISS)? And if so, can this be achieved in a low-cost, scalable and easily reproducible way, in order to tackle complex topics, such as the prolonged effects space conditions have on humans? It turns out that, while more than 565 humans have been sent into space, we only possess systemic (at a physiological level) knowledge, instead of a more analytical view, at a cellular or even molecular level.
From the more than 2500 nanosatellites flown into space, only 7 were destined to study a system of biological nature. AcubeSAT aims to host the largest-scale biological experiment on a nanosatellite level so far.
The nanosatellite currently designed by SpaceDot will have an in-house built pressurized vessel containing a microscopic assay and a lab-on-a-chip, able to sustain yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae growth, in order to probe the effects of radiation and microgravity conditions in low Earth orbit.
Note: All AcubeSAT's git repositories can be found in https://gitlab.com/acubesat/. Very few of these are here!
