Education for space

Space is becoming more accessible which is opening new possibilities for sectors and individuals who may have never had the chance in past. The high barriers of entry from launch costs and access to launch vehicles would have been prohibitive to smaller universities, colleges and schools that didn’t have major financial backing.

Getting school children, college, university students and apprentices in building their satellites is becoming more of a reality with launch costs becoming lower and making space more accessible. Pocketqubes (PQ), cubesats and smaller formats have also helped break down barriers to space by allowing inexpensive and simpler satellites to be developed. Making space part of the curriculum can be beneficial to students and to the space community as a whole.

Just like astronomy having more folk involved has aided us making more discoveries planets and spotted more comets and asteroids. This has been due to an increase in people watching the night sky which would have been more difficult for various space agencies to make these discoveries. One of the reasons for this is that amateur astronomers have more freedom in what they can look at than their space agency counterparts who can’t afford to use up time on their expensive equipment to investigate objects without proper reason. This makes amateur astronomers very helpful to space agencies as they can look at stuff that would be lower priorities or even spot stuff because someone just decided to randomly inspect an area of our universes based on a whim.

We could see something similar with PQs, cubesats or even smaller satellite formats where students have more freedom in missions, they want to carry out than the private sector. For a company to survive it must justify a mission in terms of a customer wanting to pay for that mission. Building, testing and launch satellites are expensive and having to recoup those costs can create a limit of missions that can be carried out. Whereas having a school just wanting to build and launch a satellite with limited performance capabilities as the sole reason to educate doesn’t have the same pressure. This kind of freedom can allow missions that aren’t economically viable but could prove useful be carried out. In addition, while schools and universities may have limited budgets and can’t afford qualified hardware, they could provide opportunities to qualify cheaper components. This will help future developers reduce their development costs as those cheap components could become alternative options to the higher standard ones. With this flexibility in missions new discoveries in technology, our planet and solar system could be uncovered due to a wide variety of satellites and missions being carried out.

Getting schools, colleges and universities involved in space can attract more kids and students into STEM. The moon landings would have had a positive impact in having more children interested in studying STEM subjects and having the possibility of having students build and launch their own satellites could have a similar positive impact.

Having practical projects such as building satellites will help university students learn new skills and test the ones they were taught in class. Having the goal of building something in engineering courses is better than just examinations and writing assignments. While there is Formula Student where students build and race kit cars you can provide an alternative project for those who have no interest in motorsport. I would also like to see apprentices learning their trade should have access to PQ and cubesat missions in their education as learning to machine components to tight tolerances, complex shapes and wide range of materials from aluminium, stainless steels, to titanium and brass. Both apprentices and university students taking part in these projects would teach them soft skills such as communication with working alongside different disciplines, time management and working to standards which would give them an advantage when they try to get their first job after graduating. If the project is going to take multiple years which could result in new students picking up the project, then documentation and gaining that experience from lessons learned and being able to continue an existing project is a good and challenging lesson in itself.

And finally, who would have loved to have the opportunity to build a satellite at school, college or university?