Third Canadian Satellite Design Challenge Launches

After two successful Canadian Satellite Design Challenges (CSDC) founder and manager Larry Reeves has announced that the 3rd challenge is now underway although they are still accepting applications.

At present there are eight teams in the competition: The University of Victoria, last years winner, the University of British Columbia, the University of Manitoba, the University of Waterloo, York University, the University of Toronto, École Polytechnique de Montréal and the first winner, Concordia University.

According to Reeves, Concordia which won the first competition in 2012 has not had an opportunity to launch their satellite yet. They were to have flown on a European Space Agency (ESA) Vega launch but that was changed to a flight to the International Space Station (ISS) for deployment. In so doing this necessitated changing the design of the CubeSat to accommodate deployment from the ISS.

Unfortunately, the team was not able to complete the changes in time. At this time they will need to re-apply for a future launch opportunity with ESA.

Reeves said they are still working on a possible launch for last years winner, the University of Victoria.
The CSDC has also had to adopt to greater safety requirements from ESA. This means though that future winners will have flexibility to be deployed from a Vega launch vehicle or from the ISS.

As shown below in the competition schedule, the winning team is expected to be announced by May, 2016.

Canadian Satellite Design Challenge also has a new website at http://www.csdcms.ca.

The current Canadian Satellite Design Challenge schedule.