The Quetzal-1 CubeSat: Open Sourcing the Design for Guatemala’s First Satellite

May 30, 2025 @ 3:10 PM - 3:30 PM GMT+1 Add to Calendar

This talk shares the inspiring journey of Quetzal-1, Guatemala’s first satellite, developed by a team of 100+ students, volunteers, and engineers with an average age of 21. Building the country’s first satellite posed challenges: limited know-how, tight budgets, and developing 70% of the hardware from scratch. The talk highlights the key role of open-source hardware and software and our commitment to paying it forward. So far, we’ve released hardware/software design files, a full telemetry dataset, and three peer-reviewed papers detailing the satellite’s subsystems and performance.

Dan Alvarez

Dan Alvarez, Electronic Engineer, specializes in embedded systems. He contributed to Guatemala’s first satellite, QUETZAL-1, working on attitude control and ground operations. Now volunteering on QUETZAL-2 at UVG’s Aerospace Lab, he co-authored Hope from the Sky: The Story of the First Guatemalan Satellite.

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