UBC Orbit (University of British Columbia)

UBC Orbit is the satellite design team of the University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada's third-ranked university founded in 1908 in Vancouver. UBC Orbit was established to give engineering and science students hands-on experience in designing, building, and operating a real satellite. The team operates under UBC's Faculty of Applied Science and collaborates with Simon Fraser University's Satellite Design Team.

The team's primary mission is ALEASAT — a 1U CubeSat designed for Earth observation, disaster relief communications support, and enabling amateur radio operators to task a satellite to photograph any location on Earth. ALEASAT is being developed under ESA's Fly Your Satellite Test Opportunity programme, which provides free access to ESA's CubeSat Support Facility (CSEC Redu, Belgium) for structural and vibration qualification testing. The satellite completed vibration testing at Redu in February 2024, and the team is addressing structural issues discovered during testing before its anticipated launch.

The UBC Orbit team consists of 50–100 students annually spanning mechanical, electrical, computer, and systems engineering. The ALEASAT project has become one of Canada's most visible student satellite programmes and has attracted mentorship from Canadian space industry professionals and ESA engineers.