LEODIUM project and student space activities at the University of Liege

the origin of the LEODIUM project which stands for Low Earth Orbit Demonstration of Innovations in University Mode. This project aims to create student pico- or nano-satellites. There is a strong motivation coming from the students and from the academic members to promote space. Being unexperienced in complete satellite design, as a first step in this direction, we started working with the ESA funded SSETI association. At the moment, two teams of students are working on SSETI satellites. One is working as the MECH team which is in charge of the design of the sun-pointing solar panels of the European Student Earth Orbiter (ESEO) satellite mechanisms, the other team is working on the phase-A studies of the Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) which will be the core payload of the European Student Moon Orbiter (ESMO) satellite, both in collaboration with local industrials. The students are mainly working on ESEO and ESMO as part of their master thesis. In addition to that, two PhD students are in charge of the coordination of the teams (one for the ESEO team and another for the ESMO team). They will also be the link between previous and new students every times an overlap will occur and ensure that information is not lost during the transition. In this paper, we will describe the current design and the achievements on the ESEO solar panels and the ESMO NAC camera. Explanation will also be given on how the collaboration between the local student and the SSETI association is managed. Finally, we will briefly introduce the prospective for the LEODIUM project