The YES programme The YES programme offers a fantastic
opportunity for students, professors and universities to jointly
design and build real spaceflight hardware. During each project
in the programme, students have contributed to all lifecycle
phases of a micro-satellite i.e. designing, developing,
building, testing and operating. They have also gained a deep
technical, programmatic, inter-personal and inter-disciplinary
skills that ensure they are all well prepared for careers in the
space sector, where they can start working on ambitious projects
immediately. For the YES1 project in 1997, European students
collaborated to build a 350 kg satellite which was successfully
launched. YES2 will fly on the ESA Foton-M3 mission in September
2007 and test the "Space Mail" concept by using a tether rather
than conventional rocket propulsion to return a payload to
Earth. Due to the success of the YES2 project, calls for student
ideas for the next YES project are being considered. Last
update: 13 September 2007