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Kitsat blogs
SSF and Kitsat team members at ESA BIC

Kitsat is a novel educational satellite system being developed for the teaching of the space related subjects. Not only it makes learning science, technology, engineering, the arts and mathematics (STEAM) fun, it also inspires the future generations of the New Space makers.

The first production satellites are being tested with the students and the sales of the satellites is gearing up.

SSF is one of the most experienced space companies in Finland. Space Systems Finland has played a vital part in many European space missions like Envisat, Goce, ExoMars and next generation Meteosat. Now the company has functions also in other countries and has spread its activities beyond the space business to cover systems engineering, software development and data science services also for the industrial customers.

Kitsat and SSF have multiple common interests from STEAM education to realistic spaceflight simulation, benefiting both parties.

"With Kitsat we want to boost the space education and help this promising Finnish idea to evolve", says Ilkka Nojonen, Sales Director of SSF.

"We need to ensure that Finland will not lag behind in the rapidly growing space industry and this is one of our contributions to ensure that we as a nation will have fresh hands and brains also in the future”.

"We're looking forward to this cooperation with SSF with enthusiasm as we can now use their knowhow for making the Kitsat even better", states Jari Mäkinen, who is leading the educational activities of Kitsat.

"Kitsat can be used from very general teaching for the school classes up to detailed and realistic space mission simulations pleasing the hard core geeks. SSF can help us to fine tune the user interfaces and write the software of Kitsat as space qualified as possible, making our educational satellite even more like a real satellite."

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Image:
Kitsat and SSF representatives at the ESA Business Incubation Centre Finland. Kitsat is one of the ESA BIC Finland incubatee.

From left: Matti Anttila (SSF), Bruce Clayhills (Kitsat), Ilkka Nojonen (SSF), Anna Sillanpää (Kitsat) and Tessa Nikander (Kitsat).