Ex-Alta 3 Spacecraft - Nanosats Database

Name	Ex-Alta 3
Spacecraft type	CubeSat
Units or mass	3U
Status	not launched, expected in 2026
Launcher	Falcon 9, (Transporter-17)
Organisation	University of Alberta
Institution	University
Entity	Academic / Education
Country	Canada
Launch brokerer	Exolaunch
Oneliner	Imaging ice and snow using a student-built multispectral imager, and characterizing magnetic field.
Description	The Ex-Alta 3 mission is a student project with an educational mission of supporting the training and development of highly qualified personnel by providing students with the opportunity to design, build, and operate a spacecraft. This mission is the University of Alberta’s contribution to the CubeSats Initiative in Canada for STEM (CUBICS), a Canadian Space Agency program. Scientific and Technology component: Ex-Alta 3 has a primary scientific mission of imaging ice and snow using a student-built multispectral imager, and characterizing magnetic field activity using a digital fluxgate magnetometer (DFGM) developed by the University of Alberta. Payload data will be open source and publicly available. All data will be transmitted over amateur bands (amateur UHF will be used for uplink and downlink of TT&C. The amateur S-Band frequencies would be used for the downlink of scientific payload data.)Ex-Alta 3 will also fly several in-house, open-source designs developed by AlbertaSat’s volunteer students. Amateur Component: A prominent goal of this project is to support the amateur radio community in Canada, by providing students with experiential amateur radio training through satellite communications.
Notes	One of 9 winners of the 2023 CUBICS Canadian CubeSat Project.
Sources	[1] [2] [3]
Photo sources	[1]

Last modified: 2025-12-29