EIRSAT-1 presented at the SpaceOps 2025 Conference

The 18th International SpaceOps Conference was held in Montréal, Canada, from 26th - 30th May 2025, with participants from over 30 countries, and was focused on the topic of “Towards Space Sustainability”. Under this theme, papers were presented in areas including Artificial Intelligence for Space Operations, Ground Systems Engineering, Mission Design and Management, and Safety and Sustainability of Space Operations. In addition to these technical talks, plenary and keynote speakers provided updates and insights into topics such as Lunar Exploration, Space Sustainability and Regulations, and Operations, highlighting the importance of making space more accessible, and of collaboration to ensure space missions remain sustainable for years to come.

Joe Fisher, PhD student in the UCD School of Physics and a member of the Operations and OpsDev teams for EIRSAT-1, attended the SpaceOps conference, presenting the work completed thus far in making operations more streamlined for the student-led team. Presented under the topic of “The Next Generation”, this talk underlined the possibility for a small team to utilise open-source technologies to provide ground automation of operational procedures, making operations more efficient and reducing  day-to-day operator workload.

The EIRSAT-1 team can now complete many more procedures in the short contact windows than before, leading to a much higher volume of data downlinked from the spacecraft, thereby increasing the science data return. Uplink efficiency to the spacecraft is also improved. For example, a new software image has been uplinked in less than two weeks which would have previously taken over a month to complete manually. The team is excited to continue developing these tools and hopes that other student-led missions can draw from this experience to implement their own automated operations.

Find more information about the SpaceOps conference click (opens in a new window)here 

Download the manuscript (opens in a new window)here