Streamilining astronautical engineering education through the use of internet-based course and cubesat project

The paper presents a comprehensive discussion on the use of internet- based picosatellite system engineering course and cubesat project-based learning as an educational and research tool in promoting astronautical science and system engineering education. Traditionally, space science and engineering education being a multi-disciplinary subject is noted by the lack of hands-on experiences and project-based training at the university-level curriculum. The situation is even worse in Taiwan as experts in different disciplines are not clustered at one university. To mitigate these limitations and facilitate the resources in industry, an internet-based course was offered at an inter-university level in Taiwan. The course was organized in such a manner that experts in industry and professors in different universities shared the teaching load and students were grouped to conduct their own design projects. Cubesat design was assigned as the term project for students to gain hands-on experience in design and analysis at the system and subsystem levels, as well as implementation. The paper first reviews recent development in cubesats around different universities in the world. This is followed by some discussions on the development of the internet-based course for students to learn and practice. Then, a report on the current status of the PACE (Platform for Attitude Control Experiment) satellite project, which was motivated by this internet course, is provided. Finally, a future outlook on the international collaboration of space engineering education and research based on the experiences gained in the past ten years is given.