Monitoring glaciers from space using a cubesat

The École Polytechnique de Montréal and the University of Bologna recently collaborated to develop a nanosatellite mission in the context of the 2012-2014 iteration of the Canadian Satellite Design Challenge, an inter-university competition intended for the development of space expertise among graduate and undergraduate students. The mission comprised two different scientific payloads: one aiming at monitoring climate changes in the Arctic, and the other addressing the need to reduce space debris. Here we report the organizational and technical challenges we faced, as well as the lessons we learned.