"Houston, we have a problem" is on the T-shirt with the NASA logo, which is worn by Václav Lazar, a doctoral student from the Aviation Institute of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. Now he should rather report, "Houston, we have a project!" He and his team succeeded in the internal BUT grant competition for Ph.D. students and, thanks to financial support, can work on the development of a small CubeSat class satellite for the next two years.

He wanted to be an astronaut at high school and he still has stellar ambitions to this day. Right at the beginning of his doctoral studies at the Institute of Aviation, Václav Lazar said that he would like to work in the space industry. To participate in the new internal BUT grant competition for Ph.D. students called KInG came up with the idea to develop a small satellite, the so-called CubeSat.

"The original idea is mine, but we succeeded with the project as a team. It is difficult to build such a satellite on your own, it is a very multidisciplinary matter. That's why I was looking for people in the team who would add competencies that I don't have. Finally, I got two boys from the faculty – Jaroslav Bartoňek from the Institute of Aviation and Tomáš Láznička from the Department of Physical Engineering, who will do design, construction and testing with me. At the Faculty of Information Technology, we have two other team members – Štěpán Rydl and Petr Malaník, both from the Institute of Intelligent Systems. They will work on hardware and software," Lazar explains.

CubeSats are small cubes in the shape of a cube with an edge length of 10 centimetres and a maximum weight of 1.3 kilograms. These satellites are currently experiencing a boom. They are also popular at universities and research institutes, allowing them to perform experiments that were unaffordable in the days of conventional satellites for hundreds of millions of dollars. Putting CubeSat into orbit will cost around $ 100,000, an amount that workplaces can often afford to invest. Recently, Norbert Werner from Masaryk University in Brno, for example, launched "his" CubeSat into space to observe flashes of gamma radiation directly from space (note: colleagues from FEEC also took part in contacting this satellite).

Václav Lazar is more modest, he does not expect to launch his first CubeSat into space, because the grant does not offer him such high support." We will kick the ball so that we can play football in three years," he suggests in a sporting metaphor that he intends to devote himself to the area for a long time.

Print me the satellite

The team of doctoral students is probably the first at BUT, under whose hands the entire CubeSat is to be created, from the design and construction to the testing of the mission itself. They also plan to try a number of innovative elements on a small satellite. The most interesting is the material and technology: 3D printing from thermoplastic. "The original idea was to try 3D printing from metal, but in the end we moved to 3D printing from thermoplastic. The European Space Agency has also in the past dealt with thermoplastic printing for space applications. In addition, plastic is more suitable for CubeSat production on board the International Space Station: the satellite would be printed directly in space and – simply put – just dropped out the window. In any case, the advantage of plastic 3D printing is that it would be easier to implement in space than 3D printing from metal," Lazar describes.

He is convinced that Brno is a good place for the space industry. "In recent years, I have become convinced that the connection between Brno and the universe is really not just a marketing bubble. There are great companies directly from the space industry: companies focused on electronics, design, testing and precision parts production. I believe that the combination of "Brno and space technology" is really a trend and there will be ideal opportunities in the field in the future," Lazar adds.

But first he wants to gain experience and the first step is the just acquired project. "I think that the fact that we are the first to comprehensively address this at BUT is our added value. So far, we have no history in this area, but I can't say that we have no experience, "Lazar points out the fact that the Institute of Aviation focuses not only on aviation but also on space technology and is already working on several projects for ESA.

He too would like to get a satellite into space in the future. But he is still standing on the ground. "Such a step needs to be supported by an excellent project. We will now try to build a portfolio to achieve such support in the years to come. And I hope that we will gradually be able to pass on our experience to students. Especially for those, we are preparing an information website for our project and we would like to involve them more in the future," Lazar concludes.

The internal grant competition is implemented within the OP RDE project entitled Quality Internal Grants of BUT (KInG BUT); Reg. number: CZ.02.2.69/0.0/0.0/19_073/0016948.