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Ñuble Ciencia Viva Brings Space Technology to San Nicolás High School Students

Wed, 04 Nov 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Ñuble Ciencia Viva 2026 gathered school students and researchers at the Liceo Bicentenario de Excelencia Polivalente San Nicolás on 21 October. Prof. Carlos González and undergraduate Claudia Villa presented the SUCHAI program, the technical challenges of building Chilean university satellites, and the SUCHAI-4 launch. They also introduced a VIME-funded initiative in which high-school students assemble a portable ground station and receive signals from the satellite, connecting classroom work with the lab’s research at DIINF.

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DIINF Space: Students Help Put SUCHAI-4 Nanosatellite into Orbit with Critical Flight Software

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 14:54:19 +0000

After the SUCHAI-4 launch, DIINF students were behind critical flight software that keeps the satellite operating in orbit under severe constraints: limited processors and memory, and only about four passes over Santiago per day with windows of five to ten minutes. Lucas Mecías automated operations by sending batches of commands that the satellite executes in sequence, while Josué Mateluna designed the interface used to operate the mission. The rest of the time SUCHAI-4 must run autonomously, with no operator in the loop.

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SUCHAI-4 is Now in Orbit! A Milestone for Chilean Space Research

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

SUCHAI-4 reached orbit at 03:10 Chilean time aboard a Falcon 9, beginning a new stage for Chilean space exploration. The satellite was deployed about 54 minutes after liftoff into an initial orbit at 610 km, then switched on automatically and waited 30 minutes before deploying its antennas. That sequence opened the link with the ground station at the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences of the University of Chile, followed by verification of onboard systems and the start of the scientific mission.

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USACH Students Behind the Flight Software that Took SUCHAI-4 to Orbit

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Students and academics from the DIINF at the USACH Faculty of Engineering were part of the team behind the computational systems of SUCHAI-4, launched in the early hours of 7 July. The mission, led by SPEL at the University of Chile, needs a complex software architecture that lets the 3U CubeSat operate autonomously, run experiments and send data back to Earth. The article, published by DIINF Communications, profiles the student talent that turned classroom programming into software running in orbit.

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Interview: SCY-FI Lab Lead Discusses SUCHAI-4 Nanosatellite Launch and Mission

Thu, 11 Jun 2026 13:58:55 +0000

DIINF interviewed Carlos González Cortés ahead of the SUCHAI-4 launch, a mission in which the department takes part. The nanosatellite concentrates close to 60 scientific and technological experiments in about five kilograms, from plasma propulsion systems to the cultivation of microorganisms, and was to be launched from the United States in early July. González highlighted Chile’s competitive conditions for this kind of project and pointed to human capital formation as the programme’s most important outcome.

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Carlos González Cortés Discusses Nanosatellites and Aerospace AI at IIMCh Space Resources Commission

Wed, 20 May 2026 12:00:00 +0000

The Space Resources Commission of the Chilean Institute of Mining Engineers held a working session with Carlos González Cortés, academic at the DIINF of USACH and PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Chile. The discussion covered space exploration with nanosatellites, flight software development, the evolution of the satellite industry, megaconstellations, artificial intelligence applied to aerospace systems, and the challenges Chile faces in strengthening its technological independence. The commission is chaired by Marco Muñoz.

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Seminar on Nanosatellite Development and Space Exploration at Universidad de Chile

Tue, 19 May 2026 12:00:00 +0000

The Department of Electrical Engineering at Universidad de Chile invited Dr. Carlos González to a seminar on nanosatellite development and space exploration, held on Wednesday 3 June at 12:00 in the DIE seminar room. The talk covered applied engineering for space missions, the development of nanosatellites in Chile, CubeSat technology, satellite communications and flight software. Attendance was open, with registration requested only to help organise the activity. The session was aimed at students and researchers working on space systems.

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Invited Talk on Space Exploration with Nanosatellites at New Mexico State University

Mon, 18 May 2026 15:37:55 +0000

Efrén López hosted Dr. Carlos González Cortés at New Mexico State University, where he delivered the invited talk “Space Exploration with Nanosatellites”. The presentation covered his experience at the Space and Planetary Exploration Laboratory of the University of Chile and at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), and discussed the design, operation and research opportunities of small satellite missions. The visit strengthens the link between the SCY-FI Lab and NMSU, with both sides looking forward to continuing the exchange.

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Sin Manual: USACH Faculty of Engineering Hosts Innovation and Entrepreneurship Exchange

Fri, 15 May 2026 12:00:00 +0000

The USACH Faculty of Engineering held “Sin Manual”, a day organised by its Innovation Centre together with the Department of Economics and the Entrepreneurs Club. Students, academics and alumni shared real experiences of innovation and entrepreneurship, with emphasis on trying ideas even when the path is not written in advance. The activity is part of the faculty’s efforts to bring innovation practice into engineering training and to connect the university with the networks that support new ventures.

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VIME Fund: Project Will Bring Satellite Ground Stations to High Schools to Strengthen STEM Teaching

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Dr. Carlos González was awarded a VIME grant for a project that connects high-school STEM groups with real space missions developed in Chile, framed by the low-cost nanosatellite programme that will launch SUCHAI-4 during 2026. The project builds a portable ground station able to capture satellite signals and takes it into classrooms. It responds to an unequal access to space-based STEM experiences among secondary students, and aims to motivate specialisation in STEM careers through hands-on work with locally built space technology and its mission operations.

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Carlos González Cortés Talks About Nanosatellite Space Exploration Challenges at USACH

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Carlos González Cortés gave a talk at USACH on the engineering challenges and research opportunities of space exploration with nanosatellites built in Chile. He reviewed the history of the small-satellite programme developed at Chilean universities, the scientific and technical constraints imposed by the CubeSat standard, and what it takes to build satellites locally. The session closed with the global trends of the space sector and the ways in which USACH can contribute to space exploration through its students and research groups.

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U. de Chile Leads Team Sending Biological and Technological Experiments to the International Space Station

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 12:00:00 +0000

A multidisciplinary team coordinated by SPEL at the University of Chile, and including researchers from USACH, PUCV and Fundación Biociencia, is preparing a payload of technological and biological experiments for the International Space Station. The container will expose the experiments to microgravity and radiation to advance both technology development and the understanding of life in space. The announcement was published on 25 March by the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences of the University of Chile.

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HoneySat: Satellite Honeypot Exposes Real Attacks on Space Infrastructure

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 12:00:00 +0000

HoneySat, the first functional satellite honeypot, was presented at the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium in San Diego. It uses real ground-segment software to simulate a mission while the space segment is a high-interaction satellite simulator; ten satellite operators tested it and 90 percent could not tell it from a real mission. Once exposed on the internet it collected 22 real commands from attackers, and an in-orbit demonstration connected it to an actual satellite to show it deceives attackers listening on the radio link.

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Student Presents Portable Ground Station Project for STEM Outreach in Schools

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 20:52:14 +0000

On 14 January, Claudia Villa gave her first conference talk at the IV Jornadas En Línea en Educación Superior y STEM, organised by CICES at the USACH Faculty of Engineering. She presented her thesis project on using satellite technology to foster STEM learning in schools through a portable ground station, supervised by Carlos González Cortés and Rodrigo Muñoz Lazo. The plan includes an intervention at the Liceo Bicentenario San Nicolás, an application to the VIME fund to cover three stations, and validation of the equipment with SUCHAI-4.

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SUCHAI Flight Software: Open-Source, Flight-Tested, and Expanding

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 12:43:26 +0000

SPEL and the SCY-FI Lab maintain and evolve the SUCHAI Flight Software, a framework that has already flown several missions and remains central to both groups’ aerospace research. It is hardware-agnostic, with ports to the Nanomind A3200, Raspberry Pi, ESP32 and STM32 processors, and its code is fully open source for audit and reuse. Current work covers state sharing across distributed onboard computers, unified SIL and HIL testing interfaces, hardening of space assets against modern threats, and continuous code quality and performance refinement.

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USACH Team Participates in SUCHAI-4 Software Preliminary Design Review

Tue, 14 Oct 2025 20:05:40 +0000

Carlos González joined a group of DIINF students for the Software Preliminary Design Review (PDR) of the SUCHAI-4 mission, developed by the SPEL team at the University of Chile. The review served to discuss the mission’s technical challenges, propose design ideas, and organise the work and collaboration between both institutions. The post was published in Spanish and English and closed with the team’s expectation of seeing SUCHAI-4 in orbit soon.

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DIINF Students Present Thesis Works at U. de Chile SPEL Lab

Thu, 29 May 2025 12:00:00 +0000

On 29 May, Josue Quileñan and Felipe Solís, students of Ingeniería en Ejecución en Informática at DIINF-USACH, presented their bachelor thesis work at the Space and Planetary Exploration Laboratory (SPEL) of the University of Chile. The session took place within an inter-institutional collaboration with academics from DIINF and from the Electrical Engineering Department of the same university. Presenting undergraduate work in a laboratory that builds and operates nanosatellites is part of the joint training path that links USACH students with the SUCHAI missions.

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