The five-year-old Philippine Space Agency (PhilSA) has big ambitions in developing the country’s space technology and industry. It has been working on bigger and better satellites — like the soon-to-be-launched MULA satellite — building on projects from past programs under the Department of Science and Technology (DOST).

Even then, PhilSA continues to build the smaller, under-the-radar satellites. It’s currently working on Maya-7, the seventh iteration of the Maya cube satellites. Classified as nanosatellites, a Maya satellite weighs a kilogram, with each side of the cube satellite measuring 10 centimeters. This satellite can fit in the palm of your hand. 

Past Maya satellites, although small, carried to space payloads or instruments that perform specific functions; all of them had cameras for Earth observation from space. 

The cube satellite project, however, has a bigger mission on Earth. 

Since 2016, the project has been a platform for Filipino engineers to learn how to build satellites. The nanosatellite’s size makes it a cost-effective way to cultivate a new breed of space engineers. 

Under the project, engineers have been learning how to define satellite missions, design models, build the actual satellites, and test them before launch. Once the satellites are in orbit, the engineers also learn how to operate them until the end of the mission. 

When it was still under the DOST, the project launched six Maya satellites into space — from Maya-1 to Maya-6, all of which had already returned to Earth — and trained four batches of Filipino engineers. Now, under PhilSA, a new team has been working on Maya-7 in the Philippines since 2022.

Growth is exponential

PhilSA engineer Renzo Wee has been mentoring the Maya-7 team, having had prior experience as part of the team that built Maya-3 and Maya-4, the first-ever satellites built in the Philippines. 

At first, the 29-year-old Wee knew almost nothing about space systems engineering. He only learned about the project when a friend asked him to apply in 2018. At the time, he had been taking a gap year after earning his electronics and communications engineering degree from the Ateneo de Zamboanga University.

“When this opportunity came, it’s [a] bit of a funny story because I did not really know at first that we were developing satellites,” he said. But Wee found nanosatellite engineering interesting because it had something to do with space, which, he said, was “every kid’s dream.”

Wee got accepted as part of the first batch of students under the STeP-UP (Space Science and Technology Proliferation through University Partnerships) scholarship, implemented by the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman in collaboration with Kyushu Institute of Technology (Kyutech) in Japan. 

The scholarship was under the DOST’s STAMINA4Space (Space Technology and Applications Mastery, Innovation, and Advancement) program. While building the satellites, Wee had to take the nanosatellite engineering track under a master of science or master of engineering in electrical engineering course at UP Diliman. 

Being part of a pioneer project that kicked off in 2019, Wee found it daunting to develop satellites. 

“Lahat kasi kinakapa pa lang kung paano ‘to gagawin (We were playing everything by ear),” he said. 

Yet the Maya-3 and Maya-4 team members overcame that challenge by focusing on their assigned tasks and helping each other when faced with difficulties. And so, when the pandemic hit in 2020, they were able to pull through by setting up a system where they could control the satellite from their homes.

“[I’m proud] of the team sa ginawa namin (I’m proud of what our team did),” Wee said. “We pivoted and developed new strategies. What we did [was] we [stuck] to our strengths and [covered each other for] our weaknesses.”

For Wee, participating in the Maya cube satellite project was like a rollercoaster ride and a learning experience. From not knowing a lot, he can now converse with people about satellites without needing to look at his notes. 

“The growth [was] really exponential,” he said. “The program was designed for you to learn a lot.”

Maya-3 and Maya-4 both reentered the Earth’s atmosphere in 2022. 

Mentorship is a two-way street

In contrast to Wee, Maya-7 engineer John Michael Rey Zamora had been following PhilSA’s activities since the agency’s establishment in 2019. He graduated from the Southern Luzon State University in Quezon province with an electronics and communications engineering degree in 2018 and had been meaning to apply then.

“After ko pumasa ng boards, saktong kakatapos lang noong applications for [a] batch of STAMINA4Space [participants]. So, naisip ko noon: I think siguro it’s not my time yet.” 

(After I passed the board exam, the STAMINA4Space applications had just closed. So, I thought to myself: maybe it’s not my time yet.) 

And so, Zamora first worked for the local private industry for three-and-a-half years. But in 2022, he came across PhilSA’s call for applications for the ACCESS Nanosat (Advancing Core Competencies and Expertise in Space Studies Nanosat) project. The project continued the cube satellite program, which began under the DOST. 

Zamora applied and has since been working with seven other team members on the Maya-7, while taking the nanosatellite engineering track under a master of science or master of engineering in electrical engineering course at UP Diliman. 

But as the project was just beginning, a challenge already presented itself to the team: it turned out that the Maya-7 satellite would be a two-unit cube satellite — two cube satellites stacked on top of each other. This means that the Maya-7 team would have to approach the project differently from the past teams who worked on Maya satellites. 

The team is fortunate to have a lot of PhilSA engineers with prior experience mentoring them. Aside from Wee, other PhilSA engineers who worked on the Maya, Diwata, and MULA satellites have been offering their ideas to the team. PhilSA and Maya-1 engineer Adrian Salces is currently leading the entire project. 

However, this proved to be another challenge for Zamora and the team during the early phases of the project: among the sea of ideas, they had to figure out the best approach.

“May iba’t ibang philosophy or iba-ibang approach, perspective on how to do things,” Zamora said. “At first, sobrang confusing niya.”

(There were different philosophies, approaches, and perspectives on how to do things. It was very confusing at first.) 

But having different perspectives is healthy when it comes to building a satellite. 

“I understand the confusion because when you’re learning, even when you read different books, the books will give you different examples and perspectives,” Wee said in a mix of English and Filipino.

With the new ideas and concepts, the Maya-7 team eventually integrated their mentors’ best practices as they built the two-unit cube satellite.

“The good thing actually in mentoring: it’s not really a one-way street, it’s a two way street. Because, of course, the mentees have experiences of their own.” Wee said in a mix of English and Filipino.

As for Salces, being a mentor doesn’t mean being perfect. “[The mentees] are also better in some ways,” he said. “You just have to listen.”

The Maya-7 team is currently working on building the engineering model of the Maya-7 satellite. The engineering model would be exactly the same as the satellite model to be flown into space, but it’s meant to go through tests to check if the satellite would work based on the team’s design. 

The team has yet to build the flight model that would be launched into space. 

Patience is a virtue

Salces, like Wee, never really planned on becoming a space engineer. 

He was a graduate student and faculty member of the Electrical and Electronics Engineering Institute at UP Diliman from 2014 to 2016. At the time, he was inspired by his mentor and thesis adviser, now-PhilSA Director General Joel Joseph Marciano Jr., to pursue space engineering.

So, in 2016, he took the opportunity to build the first Maya satellite under Kyutech’s Joint Global Multi-Nation Birds Project while taking a doctoral in space engineering in Japan. Two years later, Maya-1 was launched into space. 

The satellite returned to Earth in 2020 after two years in orbit. In the same year, Salces returned to the Philippines after finishing his doctoral studies. 

“When I returned in 2020, I thought it would be best to use what I learned and [the] experiences I gained to lead another satellite project locally. That’s when I started with PhilSA,” he said. 

However, he had a difficult time applying what he learned to the Maya-7 satellite project. Back in Japan, he was used to easily getting components, making the satellite-building process fast. In the Philippines, manufacturing companies are not yet fully equipped to produce satellite and spacecraft components. 

The Maya-7 team has been working with these companies to produce such components. This effort has been part of PhilSA’s bigger goal of strengthening the country’s space industry. 

As of this writing, some components for Maya-7 from local manufacturers have not yet arrived. The team has solved this issue by having the missing components 3D-printed to proceed to the assembly procedure trial. 

The trial gives the team a feel of assembling the components of the satellite, which is a sensitive and critical process. This prepares them for the actual assembly process once the components are already complete. 

With more time, Salces said, the Maya-7 satellite could be completed.

 “And we can only get better. Kasi na-establish na namin ‘yung connections [with companies] (Because we have already established connections with companies),” he added. “We just have to be patient.”

Now two years in the making, there has yet to be an exact date for the launch of the Maya-7 satellite. 

For Wee, learning doesn’t stop after the Maya satellites are built. “Am I confident in what I have right now, what I learned? Of course not,” Wee said. “Oo, marami na [‘kong] natutunan. Pero marami pa [‘kong] dapat matutunan.”

(Yes, I’ve already learned a lot. But I still have a lot more to learn.) – Rappler.com