The BIRDS program, developed by Kyushu Institute of Technology, is an educational initiative focused on CubeSat development. This repository serves as a central hub for open-sourcing files, code, and designs from the BIRDS program, enabling other entities to utilize and contribute to the advancement of CubeSat technology. The BIRDS Open Source project is committed to demonstrating lean satellite development that is well documented, easy to adapt and debug, and that caters to the needs of the entire satellite development workflow, from satellite design configurations to ground station data collection and analysis. Take a peek at the website for BIRDS Open Source for more information that may be relelvant to you. We also have a monthly webinar to discuss various issues related to the satellite bus, past webinar recordings and presentations can be found here.

The BIRDS program provides hands-on training in satellite engineering, project management, and cross-cultural teamwork. Through the development of CubeSats¹, students from non-space-faring nations gain practical experience and contribute to global capacity building in space technology.

Kyushu Institute of Technology (Kyutech) has been carrying out its BIRDS program since 2015. In the program, inexperienced student members receive training and develop multiple 1U CubeSats. Each BIRDS project develops 1U CubeSats for the capacity building of non-space-faring nations. As of Febuary 2024, six generations of BIRDS projects have been carried out:

• BIRDS-1,
• BIRDS-2,
• BIRDS-3,
• BIRDS-4,
• BIRDS-5, and
• BIRDS-X.

The BIRDS program is a unique educational program that provides an excellent opportunity for learning systems engineering, project management, and cross-cultural teamwork, not only conventional space technologies.

The BIRDS BUS is a standard CubeSat bus of electrical design to support the BIRDS program. The design puts an emphasis on ease for beginners to learn and use it. For example, the BIRDS BUS uses a distributed system design, not for its performance but for the easy work sharing and simple coding work involved.

This treasure trove of information can seem quite daunting to someone on first encounter, so let's go through the repositories we have in this organisation one by one so you can find what you need with ease.

If you're curious about the BIRDS program itself, the BIRDS Program Textbook is readily available in its own repository with the complementary Interface Control documents, both in English and Japanese.

The general organisation of repositories that we have adopted is sectional. So each segment of each satellite has its own repository. For example you will find that for each subsystem of a satellite, is a dedicated repository. The open sourcing of the BIRDS program started after the third generation of the satellite so that is where our documentation starts.

• BIRDS3-ProceduresAndReports
• BIRDS3-COM
• BIRDS3-SolarPanel
• BIRDS3-RAB
• BIRDS3-OBC
• BIRDS3-FAB
• BIRDS3-CAD
• BIRDS3-BPB
• BIRDS3-AntennaPanel

• BIRDS4-ProceduresAndReports
• BIRDS4-COM
• BIRDS4-SolarPanel
• BIRDS4-RAB
• BIRDS4-OBC
• BIRDS4-FAB
• BIRDS4-CAD
• BIRDS4-BPB
• BIRDS4-AntennaPanel

• BIRDS5-CAD
• BIRDS5-Parts_list
• BIRDS5-Procedures_Reports
• BIRDS5-PCB_Designs
• BIRDS5-Source_Codes

You are welcome 🙂

• Give us a star ⭐
• Watch repository to be notified about updates 👀
• If you will find some bugs, report them in Issues 🐞
• Try Birds designs on some real computer and let us know how it worked in Discussions. 💬
• We would greatly appreciate if you would also tell others about this ecosystem, it helps us to improve BIRDS Open Source. Thank you!