From Curiosity to CubeSat

I have always been fascinated by the moment when theory stops being abstract and starts blinking, beeping, and streaming real data. That moment is where real learning happens. As a maker from Brazil, deeply passionate about computing, hardware, and space systems, I wanted to create something that could bring orbital thinking down to the classroom bench.

That idea eventually became SALGSAT - STEM Applied Learning Ground Satellite, a one unit educational CubeSat designed not to fly into orbit, but to do something just as powerful. It lets students interact with the core concepts behind real satellites using hardware they can actually touch, rotate, measure, and question.

The project started with a simple observation. Space education is often either too theoretical or too expensive. Many students learn about satellites through slides and diagrams but never experience telemetry, attitude sensing, or onboard data systems in a hands on way. At the same time, real space hardware is far beyond the budget and safety envelope of most schools and labs.

SALGSAT was designed to sit exactly in that gap.

At its core, this is a fully self contained one unit CubeSat platform built around an ESP8266 microcontroller. It operates as its own WiFi access point, hosts a local web interface, and continuously reads a suite of environmental and inertial sensors. While it remains safely on the ground, the system behavior mirrors many of the data flows and operational patterns you would find in an actual small satellite mission.

The goal was never to build a toy. The goal was to build something approachable but technically honest.

When students pick it up and rotate the structure, they are not watching a canned animation. They are seeing live fused sensor data. When they connect to the onboard web interface, they are not opening a mock dashboard. They are interacting with a real embedded web server running on the device itself.

This distinction matters.

Because once the hardware becomes real, the questions become real too. Why does the heading drift near metal objects. Why does calibration matter. What happens to acceleration readings when the unit is inverted. Why does light distribution across the faces change the panel readings.

Those are the moments where curiosity turns into engineering thinking.

Why the CubeSat Format Changed Everything

Long before SALGSAT existed on my workbench, the CubeSat standard had already reshaped how people enter the space world. What started as an academic initiative in the late nineteen nineties quietly became one of the most important democratizing forces in modern aerospace.

The idea behind CubeSat was beautifully simple. Instead of every university or small team inventing their own satellite form factor, the community agreed on a modular cube. One unit, or 1U, measures ten centimeters on each side. From that baseline, larger spacecraft can be built by stacking units together while still remaining compatible with standardized deployers.

That single decision removed enormous friction from the ecosystem.

Before CubeSat, access to space hardware development required significant funding, custom mechanical design, and complex launch integration. With CubeSat, universities, research groups, and even advanced high school programs suddenly had a realistic entry point. The barrier shifted from mechanical compatibility to systems engineering and mission design, which is exactly where the educational value lives.

But something interesting happened along the way.

As CubeSats became more common in orbit, they also became powerful teaching tools on the ground. Educators realized that the physical format itself carries pedagogical weight. When students hold a ten centimeter cube that mirrors real flight hardware proportions, the experience becomes tangible in a way that slides and simulations cannot match....