How to get involved

Come help build satellites!

It's OK, we have no idea what we're doing either. So come join us and help build satellites!

First, do your homework

Your first step is, naturally, some homework! Learn about CubeSats, space, and OreSat by reading through our Getting Started page. Pay attention to Sections 1 and 2 in particular.

Crash one of our meetings

  • Come to an Orientation meeting if you can! They're always on the second Tuesday of each quarter at 7:00pm on Zoom (link is in the calendar). We go over everything PSAS is doing, including rockets, liquid fuel engines, and of course OreSat. If you can't make it to an Orientation meeting, don't worry, just drop into one of our weekly meetings.

  • Drop in on a weekly OreSat Team Meeting every Friday at 2:00pm on Zoom (link is in the calendar). If you're interested in working on OreSat, this is definitely the meeting to attend. Don't be afraid to ask questions!

  • Drop in on a subsystem team meeting. Figure out what you're interested in, and jump on the subteam's call (again, links are in the calendar). Doing environmental science/geography? Choose CFC camera. Doing thermal? Choose the thermal team, etc. If you have no idea, just stick around! There's tons to do, but learning about everything that is going on can take some time.

  • Follow our Twitter or Instagram (@oregoncubesat), Facebook, or LinkedIn. Sync our public Google calendar to yours.

Collab-o-rate

  • When you're ready, join us on Slack. It's how we communicate. Email oresat@pdx.edu.

  • We have a Google Drive with a lot of things in it. Ask for it to be shared with you.

  • Make a Github account and ask to join the 'oresat' and 'psas' organization.

Important things, please read

  • This is a volunteer organization. Never feel bad about dropping in and out! Happens all the time. Note that many people find it soul crushing to join the project, get excited, and then have to drop out because of work / school / family / pandemic / wildfires / protests / murder hornets / etc, but it doesn't bother us! Just come back when you've got more time! We'll be here.

  • The best thing you can do is get involved and take on a project. This takes time and patience.

  • No one is going to tell you what to get involved in. That's up to you. Once you pick an area, we'll help you ramp up and get started. But you have to choose where to start!

  • Be warned: the learning curve is a brick wall. You will feel out of your league and stupid. So do we! And that's why this project is so amazing - you're going to learn a ton and get hands-on experience that looks great on your resume.

Questions? Comments? Email us at oresat@pdx.edu for more information.

PSU students

You're in, there's nothing you have to do except show up. We accept all majors, and we really mean that: we have our own space program, which requires everything from graphics design to financial accounting to project management. We need you, come build a space program!

PCC students

You're in. We love you guys. Come play satellites with us. It's a little annoying because we can't get you card access to the rocket room, but that's just a minor inconvenience.

Non-psu students

We love collaboration, and we'll try collaborating with you! However, it's a bit harder since you're usually remote and can't attend work parties. That said, we do everything on Zoom too, so give it a try! Software and CAD folks are usually the most successful here.

High School students

We have a surprising number of high school students who work with us. Note that you must be at least 16 years old, and we'll need some kind of parent/ guardian permission.

Non-students

We have a lot of "industry advisors" in PSAS: space nerds who are not students but have something to contribute to the project. PSAS continues to live and breathe through the years because of our amazing industry advisors. We have over 20.

space companies

We're building you a kickass work force. They're super excited about space. And we train them to work on collaborative interdisciplinary teams with an agile-light project management style. They get trained in best practices (documentation, repositories, communication, etc) and we consistently hear that our peeps are useful and focussed from day one. We even try to train them how to write decently, and you know how hard that is.

We now have folks at NASA, ULA, SpaceX, Blue Origin, FireFly, Collins, Lockheed, CesiumAstro, Outpost, Lynk ... please contact us at oresat@pdx.edu in order to post jobs, get interns, and of course, donate piles of cold, hard cash to support your local space company