The European Space Agency (ESA) invited university student teams to develop a CubeSat as part of the “Fly Your Satellite!” (FYS) programme. The Greek AcubeSAT's proposal was chosen together with two others from applicants across all over Europe and Canada. AcubeSAT is a multidisciplinary project by SpaceDot, a team led by ambitious students primarily from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki with members from various Greek and European universities, including the University of Crete.

The AcubeSAT mission aims to probe the effects of microgravity and radiation on gene expression of eukaryotic cells in-orbit, employing a miniaturized Lab-on-a-Chip platform. During this talk, members of the team are going to present the team’s structure and technical organization in distinct subsystems. An overview of the mission objectives and experimental platform is going to be provided, zeroing in on the core technologies employed. Examples include the engineering of yeast cells to be put in orbit, the development of a microfluidic chip-based cell culturing system and a fluorescence imaging system. Focusing on AcubeSAT’s payload container, which hosts the experimental instrumentation, the Thermal and Structural subsystems will also be presented.