EyeSat was the pilot project for CNES’s JANUS program (Jeunes en Apprentissage pour la réalisation de Nanosatellites au sein de Universités et des écoles d’Enseignement Supérieur). This program enables students to develop and send CubeSats into space. In this context, EyeSat has been developed by students from French engineering schools (ISAE-Supaero, ENAC, ESTACA) on internships at CNES and students from the Cachan IUT.
Its scientific mission was to measure zodiacal light. This light comes from the Sun’s reflection off small particles on the ecliptic plane, the plane on which the planets of the solar system move. These fine dust particles are important for astronomical observation, as they are potentially hindering.
U-Space was born out of this project and accompanied Eyesat during its 4 years of operation (a timeframe that exceeded expectations and was surprisingly long for a project developed by students).
The satellite burned up on re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere on November 19, 2023.
Solutions offered
This project enabled the rapid increase of its stakeholders’ skills, who were just discovering the world of cubesats.
The team assembled pre-figured U-Space’s future management team and enabled them to forge links.
The satellite was operated during the 4 years following its launch. This has enabled U-Space to gain maturity in its operations.
