CUBICS: grow capability across teams and mission generations

CUBICS, the CubeSats Initiative in Canada for STEM, extends Canada’s support for student satellite missions after the Canadian CubeSat Project. The first CUBICS opportunity appeared in 2022, and CSA announced nine grants in June 2023. The selected projects addressed different technical and scientific questions, connected by a program-level aim of advancing knowledge and training students.

The portfolio included projects such as Ex-Alta 3 for snow and ice observations, RADSAT-SK2 for radiation-related computing technology, and the University of Victoria’s MarmotSat for Earth, ocean and atmosphere imaging. Their names identify different missions, not interchangeable copies of a single satellite. A grant selection establishes support for development; the status and results of each spacecraft need their own evidence.

CSA’s 2026 CUBICS opportunity introduced a 6U stream and a stream for CubeSats up to 3U. The 6U route required collaboration with another Canadian post-secondary institution providing a payload — open definition. This is a dated description of that opportunity, not a permanent rule for every future round or proof that any proposed mission has launched. The different routes recognize different levels of mission ambition and experience.

A larger spacecraft can offer more room without automatically giving a team a better mission. Additional payloads create interface, power, data and testing work. A useful proposal connects its scientific question to measurements the team can actually obtain, then identifies who is responsible for each part. Bus and payload teams need a shared agreement about connectors, timing, commands and the meaning of returned data.

A fictional student-mission energy budget

Consider a fictional student satellite with 12 watt-hours available for a particular observing period. The payload needs 5 watt-hours, communications need 4 and other spacecraft functions need 2. The plan uses 11 watt-hours and leaves 1 watt-hour of margin. That simple budget does not prove the design is ready; engineers must also check uncertainty, timing, peak demand and the assumptions behind the available energy.

Now imagine the payload team changes its data format just before a student handover. The spacecraft may continue sending packets while the ground team misreads them. Recording the format, testing it with known examples and assigning ownership of the interface reduces that risk. CUBICS illustrates how a national initiative can build lasting capability: each mission develops people, tools and working relationships that later teams can inherit, alongside whatever scientific measurements the satellite returns.