The space industry appears to be undergoing a paradigm shift from large monolithic space platforms to smaller distributed platforms, referred to as pico-nano- or micro-satellites. This space industry paradigm shift is multifaceted: firstly, the paradigm shift is enable by advances in miniaturization technologies; secondly, due to the lower developmental and launch costs of these smaller platforms, new entrants into the space business have been enabled; thirdly, due to the smaller sizes of the space platforms, a single launch vehicle can deploy numerous satellites on orbit using a containerized approach; and fourthly new space business models are emerging, with significant interests non-governmental organizations (NGOs). This talk focuses primarily on the second aspect, i.e., “new entrants” to the space business, and specifically new entrant from academia.

In the late 1990s, Prof. Bob Twiggs (Stanford University) and Jordi Puig-Suari (California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo aka CalPoly) sought to provide engineering students with the experience of designing, building, and operating basic satellites. This experience led to the birth of the CubeSat and the containerized satellite launch approach. Building on the successful experiences at Stanford University and Cal Poly, universities globally began to engage in developing their own small satellite programs. The purpose of this talk is two folds: first is to provide a process-based approach for developing an education space program and second is to discuss some of the lessons learnt while developing such a program at the University of Florida.