The Technical Review and Progress Review Meetings of APSCO Student Small Satellite (SSS) Project was held during April 16-25, 2018 at Ankara, Turkey. The delegation from Bangladesh, China, Iran, Mongolia, Pakistan, Peru, Thailand and Turkey actively participated in the Meeting.

The meeting was chaired by Dr. Mohammad Ebrahimi Seyedabadi, Direct-General of the ET&DM Department of APSCO. More than forty (40) delegates from APSCO Member States (MS) including the Program Management Board (PMB) members, the Program Management Team (PMT) members, the project leading universities, the Secretariat of APSCO and the invited experts, participated in this review activity. Mr. Xu Yansong, Division Director for International Affairs from CNSA also participated in the Meeting.

A total of seventeen (17) SSS-1 CDR documents, fifteen (15) SSS-2A CDR documents, ten (10) SSS-2B PRR documents and seventeen (17) SSS-2B PDR documents were circulated by APSCO Secretariat and reviewed before the meeting by the PMB Members, the PMT Members, the invited consultant and MS’s experts independently. By reviewing the required documents, in total, three hundred and thirty-five (335) Review Item Discrepancies (RIDs) were sorted and all RIDs and their clarifications by the SSS-1, SSS-2A and SSS-2B teams were presented in detail during the meeting. Frequency application, ground station network, summer camp were fully discussed.

Beihang SSS-1 team is led by Prof. Huang Hai and Dr. Wang Xinsheng from school of astronautics, Beihang University. The SSS-1 CDR documents were provided by Beihang team. In addition, Beihang provided three technical reports which described the detailed design of structure, mechanism and thermal subsystem. Experts from MSs and the consultant considered they basically reach the standard of CDR phase. This work provided a good example for other MSs and laid a good foundation for the critical design of satellite. During this meeting, Prof. Huang Hai provided a presentation on the SSS-1 implementation progress. He emphasized that many inputs were still pending for system critical design from subsystem providers.

The Member States have reached a consensus that satellite launch work would be organized by China, and the launch date is preliminarily expected in 2020. At present, the work of space callsign application has achieved a preliminary achievement, while the subsequent work is undertaking orderly. Dr. Wang Xinsheng put forward the APSCO university ground station network proposal, which received unanimous support from MSs. The APSCO university ground station network is not only the necessary guarantee of project success, but also has great significance for satellite application data sharing among MSs.

The space technology education and training is one of the key important tasks of SSS project. Beihang organized the first small satellite technology summer camp in 2017, which was of important guiding significance. The second summer camp will focus on the micro-satellite design and AIT. Turkey, the host country of second summer camp, introduced its plan and invited participants to visit the middle-east university, which may be the host university of the coming summer camp.

The Meeting was successfully concluded and the action plan of 2018 was agreed by all MSs. The experts expressed their gratitude to APSCO and TUBITAK-UZAY for their hospitality and efficiency during the Meeting.

At present, the SSS project is the largest basic activity project since the APSCO founded. CNSA, RCSSTEAP and Beihang Univeristy have paid more attention to this project. It will not only increase the MSs’ satellite design ability but also promote the space technology exchange among MSs.