Author: Jo Hinchliffe

LSF head back to Orbit with the Qubik Mission

Updates 1 Comment

Libre Space Foundation is proud to announce that it is currently developing and integrating 2 pocketqube satellites (QUBIK-1 & QUBIK-2) and supplying a pocketqube deployer (PICOBUS) to be flown as part of the DREAM payloads program on the inaugural Firefly Alpha launch from Firefly Aerospace. 

An exploded view of the QUBIK satellites

Scheduled for launch around the end of the first quarter 2020 we are delighted to be taking part in this exciting mission. 

QUBIK mockup inside the clean box

The LSF contributors have been busy developing both the pocketqubes from scratch as well as the innovative deployment system that features a constant force spring design and, of course, all developments are being carried out using open source methodologies and licenses.

The satellites are expected to be short-lived with only ~3 weeks of predicted orbit lifespan. This short timeframe will be enough though for the communications experiment they are tasked to perform. Specifically, the satellites will be conducting a series of telecommunication related experiments, while at the same time, ground station analysis of the received signals will try to exploit doppler variations in order to perform orbit determination and satellite identification from radio amateur stations around the world. The telecommunication experiments will use several different modulation, coding and framing schemes, with the intention to provide insights about their performance at nano-pico-satellite missions. In addition, the frame itself will be organized in such a way so spacecraft identification can be performed as early as possible from the physical layer.

The brains of the QUBIK satellites will be the open source pocketqube format Communications board designed by LSF

You can follow along with the progress of our development in the relevant repositories or subscribe to Libre Space Foundation channels (LSF Forum Twitter Facebook ) for updates!

QUBIK spinning on Earth before it gets to spin in orbit!

It’s a tight timeframe of only 4 months from inception to delivery and the team is working incredibly hard to design, build and test all the parts for this mission while being on track to deliver the satellites and deployer on time for integration and ready for launch, helping us further our mission to claim space the libre way.

Per Liberum, Ad Astra!

QUBIK Engineering model inside LSF cleanbox

Work Begins on Space Library Projects.

Updates No Comments

Last week in Libre Space Foundation HQ in Athens LSF hosted the kick-off meeting of the Space Library project. Papadeas Pierros (Director of Operations, LSF) and Daina Bouquin (Head Librarian at Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) headed the meeting which was joined by many members of Libre Space Foundation. The Space Library is an initiative led by the staff team at Wolbach Librar in collaboration with the Libre Space Foundation and received funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The goal is to help new communities participate in satellite missions, engender public engagement in space science, and to fuel new research by improving access to scientific research artifacts and supporting their reuse. To achieve this our team is developing open metadata standards and enabling public engagement with space technology in public libraries.  For example the MetaSat project is a project to develop and prototype an open metadata schema to link data, software, and hardware from small satellite missions. The schema will be designed and piloted using SatNOGS and it’s success will be assessed by seeking feedback from the various users, teams and contributors involved in SatNOGS. It was a pleasure to welcome Daina and we look forward to this exciting work developing.

OSCW19, Call for Participation now open.

Updates No Comments

The call for participation for the third Open Source Cubesat Workshop is now open. This year the OSCW will be held over 3 days in the beautiful Athens Conservatoire between the 14th and 16th October.

The call for abstracts reads as follows;

CubeSats have proven to be an ideal tool for exploring news ways of doing space missions: therefore let’s remove the barrier of confidentiality and secrecy, and start to freely share knowledge and information about how to build and operate CubeSats. This workshop provides a forum for CubeSat developers and CubeSat mission operators to meet and join forces on open source projects to benefit from transparency, inclusivity, adaptability, collaboration and community. The focus of this year’s workshop is to develop and apply open source technologies for all aspects of a space mission. The target audience of this workshop is academia, research institutes, companies, and individuals.

Previous OSCW events have been extremely well received and always include a large cross section of those working on space missions, cubesats and more using open source methodologies. The OSCW team are keen to receive your abstracts and the community look forward to seeing you there.

Submit your abstracts via the OSCW website.

Libre Space Activity Update 2019-05-01

Updates No Comments

Open Source Cubesat Workshop 2019 Announced

This years Open Source Cubesat Workshop (OSCW) dates have been announced and we are excited to host the event in Athens from the 14th to the 16th October 2019. Previous years have seen an amazing attendance from a really diverse range of backgrounds spanning makerspaces, academia and industry and everything in between to create this unique event. We at Libre Space hope to see you there.

Libre Space Foundation at Software Freedom Kosovo Conference

Libre Space were delighted to be asked to speak at Software Freedom Kosovo 2019 . Jo attended and gave a talk about all LSF projects undertaken to date, including SatNOGS, UPsat, SDRmakerspace, Pocketqubes HPR rocketry and more. The talk was well received and there was a lot of interest. Its fabulous to note that since this conference the first SatNOGS station in Kosovo has appeared on the network. Many thanks for an excellent conference and warm welcome.

European Summer of Code In Space (SOCIS) open till May the 4th.

A full list of approved proposed project ideas is available on the ESA SOCIS website. It’s fantastic to see that several of these projects are mentored by active contributors on our community forums and chat-rooms. The following selection are building on existing Libre Space Foundation codebase:

Upcoming Events with Libre Space Foundation presence

We are excited to have representatives at the following events over the next few months, if you are attending any of these events do feel free to talk to us about our projects, we are happy to share our passion!

  • Hamvention 2019, May 17th-19th, Xenia, Ohio, United Stated Of America. Find us at booth 1006.
  • 7th European Ground System Architecture Workshop (ESAW). May 21st-22nd at ESA ESOC, Darmstadt Germany.
  • Cloud Expo Asia, May 22nd-23rd, Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC)
  • 4th ESA Cubesat Industry Days, June 4th-6th, ESA ESTEC, Noordwijk, Netherlands.
  • Barcelona Techno Week 2019, June 17th-21st, Institute of Cosmos Sciences, Barcelona University of Physics, Spain
  • Ham Radio 2019, June 21st- 23rd, Neue Messe, Friedrichschafen, Germany. Find us at stand A1-562.
  • Software Defined Radio Academy 2019, June 22nd, a satellite event to Ham Radio 2019


Libre Space Activity Update 2019-03-27

Updates No Comments

MIT, Beyond the Cradle 2019

Members of the LSF team travelled to attend and speak at the “Beyond the Cradle” event held at MIT in Boston in the US. This lively conference was focused on envisioning a new space age and as such had a plethora of speakers from a diverse range of areas of the space community.

Pierros Papadeas spoke about the broad aims of Libre Space Foundation and the milestones so far, of course focusing on UPsat and SatNOGS as well as over viewing the open source working methodologies of our global contributors.

European Space Agency Advanced Manufacturing Workshop

Members of Libre Space Foundation attended the European Space Agency Advanced Manufacturing Workshop held at the ESTEC facility in the Netherlands. A packed couple of days with overviews of current state of the art advanced manufacturing processes being presented and also working groups discussing and debating how to increase the relevance of advanced manufacturing techniques in the space sector. LSF team keenly promoted the notion of open source approaches and certainly utilising this approach for developing some responses to the problems in post/concurrent processing, metrology and quality checks that seemed prevalent barriers reducing the uptake of emergent additive manufacturing methods. Around the workshop timetable LSF team managed to network well and identified some parties interested in SatNOGS station development and also met with ESA staff to discuss potential ESA projects LSF may be interested in applying to join.

FOSDEM 2019 Report

Updates 1 Comment

The Libre Space Foundations team and contributors attended a snowy FOSDEM to promote Libre Space and to work together on the various LSF projects. Around 21 regular contributors spent a lot of time together working in the apartment the LSF team had booked and it was wonderful to see the community meeting in real life and seeing the passion they have for Libre Space Foundation.

Much of the work in the apartment was around SatNOGS however wider LSF projects, rocketry, pocketqube and PQ9ish were also being developed and discussed.

We managed both days at FOSDEM to have a small booth in the AW building and they were extremely well attended. A huge amount of people stopped to talk and to ask questions and many expressed an interest in building a SatNOGS station. The UPsat model and story continues to enthral people which is a fabulous legacy of the mission and the Pocketqube hardware again ignites interest in satellites and the miniaturisation of electronics for space.

Whilst at FOSDEM numerous talks were delivered around LSF projects, and in particular the work on SDR makerspace. Nestoras Sdoukis delivered an excellent update on GR-Soapy. Alex Csete spoke about the SDR Makerspace as a whole, including information and updates around gr-leo and investigations of the IQ database.

Libre Space contributors visited many stands/booths and talks relating to LSF activity. It was great to see SatNOGS contributors showing the Grafana people the public dashboards we are making for SatNOGS. It was obvious the Grafana team were thrilled to see their work being used for such an innovative project. LSF contributors attended KiCAD talks and liased with Gitlab and many other of the open source tools and platforms utilised in LSF work.

Finally we wanted to thank everyone who came either as an LSF contributor, team member or the many hundreds of you who stopped at the booth for a chat. Chatting to you at and since the event leaves us invigorated and inspired to be part of this global team claiming space, the Libre way.

Libre Space Activity Update 2018-12-21

Updates No Comments

Welcome New Team Members

This week Libre Space formally welcomed four new contributors to the LSF team, these are;

  • Jo Hinchliffe
  • Fabian Schmidt
  • Patrick Dohmen
  • Cees Bassa

All four of them have been contributing tirelessly to our projects, in
meaningful ways, therefore it was only right to welcome them and include them as team contributors.

Busy times in the SatNOGs community

It’s been a big week behind the scenes at SatNOGS with a migration of the database performed and a change to enable a single sign on across all SatNOGS sites. These changes went extremely well and we thank the team who worked hard to make it happen. Also this week the community have been hunting for satellites launched on the Rocketlab ELaNA launch, capturing an ARISS scheduled contact and much more! Info on these and other SatNOGS activities can be seen here on the SatNOGS page.

SDR Makerspace and Fosdem

The SDR makerspace are pleased to announce that Alexander Csete is confirmed to speak about the project at next years FOSDEM. Its great to see our SDR makerspace project develop and gain some momentum.