WUSAT Space Missions 2005 to 2025
WUSAT Mission Heritage
The University of Warwick Satellite Engineering Team (WUSAT) was formed in 2005 by Dr. Bill Crofts at the request of the European Space Agency (ESA). Hence, WUSAT is celebrating its 20th anniversary in the same year that ESA celebrates its 50th Anniversary and Warwick celebrates its 60th Anniversary!
ESA requested the original WUSAT team to be formed as the Electrical Power Supply (EPS) subsystem team for their ESMO Moon Orbiting Satellite.
WUSAT is a unique university-based organisation that uses predominantly 4th Year MEng students in a multi-disciplinary team. They operate as a satellite mission prime contractor in order to produce a custom-designed CubeSat satellite for a client payload. They work to ESA standards and follow a recognised Space Systems Engineering Methodology to design, test, launch and operate a satellite. Early revision stages are completed via phase reviews carried out by a panel of engineers from our partners at Airbus. Later revision stages leading to launch are carried out by a panel of ESA engineers assigned to the ESA Academy launch programme.
Working with clients, ESA, and a range of partner companies/organisations in such a real-world environment provides WUSAT students with an enormous experience before they graduate. WUSAT has also been a major promotion and outreach resource for the School of Engineering and the University of Warwick and Dr Bill Crofts has presented WUSAT to countless events and activities both in the UK and abroad.
Links to specific WUSAT activity with the European Space Agency can be seen at
The links below provide information on our specific WUSAT missions.
2005 to 2012: Mission 1 - ESMO, - Electrical Power Supply sub-system team for European Space Agency Moon orbiting mission.
2012 to 2013: Mission 2 - WUSAT-1, - a high altitude balloon launch of our first 1 unit (1U) CubeSat to transmit high resolution images.
2013 to 2015: Mission 3 - WUSAT-2, - an ESA sounding rocket launch of our second 1U CubeSat carrying a light spectrometer payload designed to measure the chemical content of the atmosphere during descent;
2015 to 2022: Mission 4 - WUSAT-3, - a 3U CubeSat to demonstrate a novel RFID direction-finding capability to monitor wildlife tags.
2022 to 2025: Mission 5 - WUSAT-4, - a 3U CubeSat to provide in-orbit test/demonstration of a biological experiment (Fluorescent Deep Space Petri Pod - FDSPP).