Auburn University

The Auburn University Small Satellite Program (AUSSP), based in the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering, trains undergraduate and graduate students in the full lifecycle of small satellite design, fabrication, testing, and operations. The program grew out of Auburn's Department of Aerospace Engineering and Department of Physics, giving students hands-on experience building flight hardware long before they enter the aerospace workforce.

AUSSP's first flight project, AubieSat-1, was a 1U CubeSat built almost entirely by undergraduates and launched in October 2011 aboard a Delta II rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base as part of NASA's Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa) program. It operated as an amateur radio satellite, transmitting telemetry and the Auburn University 'War Eagle' call sign in Morse code, while also studying solar panel material degradation and ionospheric electron density via Faraday rotation.

Auburn continues to develop successor CubeSat missions and ground station infrastructure, partnering with NASA and other university programs to give students recurring opportunities to design, build, and fly real spacecraft.