University of Alberta (AlbertaSat)

AlbertaSat is a group of students and faculty at the University of Alberta that designs, builds, tests, and operates satellites. They develop open-source CubeSat components and execute spacecraft missions. Their customers include the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and they support Albertan and Canadian access to space. The group is headquartered at the University of Alberta. They were founded in 2010. The team has grown to encompass over 40 students and over 10 faculty members, and during the Ex-Alta 2 mission, regularly consisted of over 60 contributing members. They have flight heritage with Ex-Alta 1, which launched in April 2017 as part of the QB50 mission, and Ex-Alta 2, which launched in March 2023 aboard SpaceX CRS-27 as part of the Northern SPIRIT mission. They also worked on AuroraSat and YukonSat. Their current program is Ex-Alta 3, which began in June 2023 with an anticipated launch in 2026 as part of the CUBICS initiative from the CSA. Ex-Alta 1 collected data for studying space weather. Ex-Alta 2's multispectral imaging payload is designed to help understand the effects of wildfires. Ex-Alta 3's mission will be to monitor the impact of climate change on Canadian ice and snow coverage and further the objective of imaging wildfire impacts.