Your donation will provide radio-equipped microcontroller for range-testing our ChipSat LoRa communications.

Your donation will cover the cost of an entire ChipSat prototype! This includes the PCB, stencil, solder paste, and electronic components to populate the circuit board.

Your donation will allow us to test our ChipSat radios (and in the future full ChipSats!) via a high-altitude balloon launch. These long-range tests are critical to verifying that our little satellites will be heard from space!

Your donation will allow us to track our light sail when it’s in orbit! With an antenna, LNA, LoRa transceiver, and a whole lot of weather-proofing, our small rooftop setup will be able to hear our ChipSat from hundreds of kilometers away!

Your donation cools our spacecraft to subzero temperatures as we test our completed CubeSat to the extremes prior to launch! We only get on shot in space, so it’s important to test as we fly.

Your donation will deploy our light sail at the edge of space! Through a high-altitude balloon launch, we plan to capture HD footage of our light sail deployment in the space environment. It will be an important verification of our deployment mechanism, spacecraft electronics, and flight software, and of course will deliver spectacular visuals to publicize the Alpha mission!

Your donation will cover one of the 5 ChipSats designed to operate in space! (Four that will actually fly, and one spare just in case). The reason these are significantly more expensive than the prototypes are due to space-rated GPS modules (which cost $850 as opposed to the $15 earth-based ones), and the very efficient (and rare!) flexible GaAs solar cell that provides power to the board. We will only manufacture these flight units ones we fully prove the ChipSat design through the fabrication and test of the affordable prototypes, so we promise your donation will go to good use!