Competition for pre-university students in Malaysia: Design your own cubesat

The number of cubesat launched into space have been surging in the past few years and will be expected to grow in future. It has been transformed from merely a technological demonstration platform into a mission apparatus, like its macroscale counterpart. Although the potential application of cubesat is unlimited, it is still not well-known among local secondary schools and Universities students, except those from relevant disciplines. Hence, promoting cubesat in these levels is imminent for future development of the national aerospace industries. In this paper, the authors propose an activity at the level of national competition, which can raise the cubesat awareness among secondary schools and University students in Malaysia - “Design your own cubesat”. In this activity, each group of participants will be given a skeleton of standard cubesat (1U), they will then be required to design the cubesat and mimic components in it with recyclable materials such as papers, cans, plastic material and etc. Such activity is beneficial to both students and teachers as not only space-relevant knowledge is required but also embedded with environment awareness. This activity is also suitable for workshops, study camps.