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Northeastern Satellite Lab

We’re a student club at Northeastern University that designs, builds, and launches small satellites. In April 2026 our first one, PROVES Atlas, was deployed from the International Space Station. The next, TeraLink-1, is on the bench now.

You don’t need experience to join. New members start at Intro to Satellites, Mondays at 7 PM in Forsyth 129. The rest of the week’s meetings are on the schedule.

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Five club members look up at the camera from around a table covered in CubeSat boards and tools
Members of the PROVES Atlas team with the satellite's boards and flight hardware. Photo: Margot Murphy/The Huntington News.

What we’re working on

  • PROVES Atlas

    In orbit since April 2026

    Our first satellite. A camera CubeSat, built by about 15 students in under a year and deployed from the ISS with four other university satellites.

  • Diagram of TeraLink-1's links. The satellite sends telemetry over UHF and runs the 225 GHz terahertz experiment with the campus dish, then sends the experiment data over S-band to AWS ground stations. TeraLink-1UHFtelemetry225 GHzTHz linkS-bandexperiment dataUHF stationTHz dish, BostonAWS ground stations

    TeraLink-1

    Critical Design Review in November

    A 6U CubeSat that will try the first terahertz link from space to the ground. Funded by AFRL’s University Nanosatellite Program.

  • Cross-section of the 2 m Cassegrain dish. Signals reflect off the primary dish onto a small subreflector and back down to the feed horn at the center. The primary must hold its shape to within 83 micrometers. 2 mSubreflectorPrimary reflector83 µm surfaceFeed horn, 225 GHz

    Sub-THz Ground Station

    System Requirements Review

    The other end of that link: a 2 m reflector dish that must hold its shape to within 83 µm.

  • Diagram of DEWSat. The satellite images farmland in tiles, scores each tile for drought risk on board, and sends only the high-risk tiles down to the ground over S-band. 550 km, sun-synchronousDEWSatGroundS-band:high-risk tilesonlyRed + NIR imagery,scored on boardHigh drought riskLow risk, stays on board

    DEWSat

    NASA Space to Soil finalist

    A drought early-warning satellite that scores farmland for drought risk in orbit and sends down only the high-risk images.

We also help the MIT Satellite Team with LEONIRD, and run open-source projects like a star tracker and a mission simulator. All projects.

How the club works

Every member joins one of four teams, each with its own weekly meeting:

  • Hardware: structures, circuit boards, power, and firmware
  • Software: flight and ground-station code
  • Simulations: orbits, dynamics, and mission analysis
  • Business: proposals, funding, outreach, and operations

Quick facts

teams
4
space missions
2
research grants won
3+
members per semester
20+

Who we work with

Partners and mentors:
  • NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative
  • AFRL’s University Nanosatellite Program
  • Northeastern’s Institute for Intelligent Network Systems
  • UNLab
  • NSF CIRC
  • PROVES
  • Cal Poly Pomona Bronco Space
  • the MIT Satellite Team
  • Morehead State University
Members and alumni have gone on to:
  • MIT Lincoln Laboratory
  • SpaceX
  • Blue Origin
  • Draper
  • MITRE
  • RTX
  • General Dynamics Electric Boat
  • Space Dynamics Laboratory
  • Specter Aerospace
  • Shield AI
  • Morse Corp
  • Kostas Research Institute
  • Robotics and AI Institute
  • Tesla
  • Akamai
  • Stripe
  • Wayfair
  • Fidelity Investments
  • Notch
  • bionet
  • FBI
  • Harvard Medical School
  • Stanford University
  • Stanford HAI
  • Northeastern INSI

In the news

Mailing list

Meeting times, launch news, and ways to get involved, for Northeastern students and the NSL community.