The California Space Authority (CSA) recently presented a SpotBeam Award, the group's highest honor, to the CubeSat Project, initiated by Cal Poly and Stanford University. The first ever Buzz Aldrin Space Education & Workforce Award recognizes CubeSat as setting "a new precedence in education and workforce development."

In 1999, Cal Poly and Stanford University's Space Systems Development Laboratory collaborated on the development of standards for the design of picosatellites, small satellites known as "CubeSats." As a result, picosatellites built by students at universities worldwide are now launched using a common deployer known as a "P-POD" developed at Cal Poly.

"Today, multidisciplinary teams of graduate and undergraduate students at more than 40 colleges and universities are working to design, construct, test, launch and operate picosatellites," said Cal Poly Aerospace Engineering Professor Jordi Puig-Suari, faculty advisor to the CubeSat Project at Cal Poly.

Andrea Seastrand, Executive Director of CSA, said in presenting the awards, "The SpotBeam Award recipients are a collection of the best our state has to offer. They are taking space technologies down new avenues of opportunity and making the world recognize that California maintains its prominence in the global space enterprise community."

Contact: Amy Hewes, (805) 756-6402, ahewes@calpoly.edu