## 1 Introduction  
There have been nearly 1000 CubeSats launched to the orbit since the inception of the concept in 2000 [1]. An up-to-date statistics of CubeSat missions can be found in Reference [2]. A summary of CubeSat missions up to 2016 can also be found in Reference [3]. However, the life expectancy of a CubeSat mission is very limited. Two main reasons contribute to such a short lifetime: First, CubeSats are typically launched into Low Earth Orbits (LEOs), resulting in their fast orbit decay and reentry. For example, from an original circular orbit with an altitude of 400 km, CubeSats typically decay to a reentry trajectory within a period of one to two years [4]. Secondly, the early failure rate of (university-led) CubeSats is around 48% [5]. One reason for such a low reliability can be the relatively poor-quality standards that developers apply during the manufacturing, assembly, integration and validation phases. Despite growing interest from industry in CubeSats as proper means of technology demonstration, such platforms are still primarily considered as an educational tool. Therefore, it is understandable that they may not readily reach a level of quality appropriate for the space conditions, if every development is carried out without considering the experience of similar previous missions. The current trend of academic CubeSat initiatives is to aim at real science missions but without compromising the educational objectives. To fulfill scientific goals, quality control is needed during the entire Assembly, Integration, and Verification (AIV) process. Since the academic community is a nonprofit sector, researchers should share the knowledge gained through missions to not repeat mistakes and reinforce good practices. There have been several researchers and educators contributing to the community with their experience with CubeSat missions. To mention a few, the originators of the CubeSat concept from CalPoly have given an overview of the CubeSat Specifications [6]. Another team from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory has summarized the main working philosophy for CubeSats in Reference [7]. A group of researchers from North Dakota State University have developed the concept of open source satellite [8; 9; 10; 11]. Their goal is to improve the educational output of Nanosatellite hands-on projects by providing reference design models (without getting into the details of technical outcomes or programmatic aspects) and harmonizing hardware, software, testing procedures, and operations. Additionally, they demonstrate a strong correlation between participation in such projects and the amount of skills gained by students. Such educational outcomes are consistent with those found by other researchers [12; 13; 14]. However, it is necessary to solve some sustainability challenges before utilizing satellite projects as an effective educational tool. Such challenges can be summarized in two main categories according to Reference [13], i.e., funding and student involvement. In the first category, either educational institutions or private student initiatives should take the burden of finding the required amount of money to conduct a Small Satellite project. An example of creative solutions to the funding problem can be found for the development of ESTCube-2 [15], through which the team was able to effectively conduct a crowdfunding campaign. Regarding the second category, university students may have difficulties striking a balance between the time dedicated to their personal life, the academic activities and hands-on projects. Some universities already allocate academic credits to hands-on projects [13]. However, this may not give sufficient incentive in certain cases, as the amount of time and effort required for such projects often exceeds the allocated credit considerably. The organization of open-access spacecraft design competitions may be an effective solution to motivate students to participate in hands-on projects.