Abylaikhan Mukhamejanov

Abylaikhan Mukhamejanov

Mechanical Engineering Student at Lehigh University ’27

Projects › Entrepreneurship · product

SkillSat — Satellite Kits for Students

A satellite kit cheap enough for a school, good enough to fly to 40 km.

SkillSat — Satellite Kits for Students
My role
Founder — product design, prototyping, testing
When
2021 – 2023 (before Lehigh)
Where
SkillSat · tested at the National Space Center of Kazakhstan
Tools
Arduino · Raspberry Pi · 3D printing · high-altitude balloons

Before Lehigh I founded SkillSat, a small startup that makes kits for students to build their own satellite and fly it to the stratosphere. Schools in Kazakhstan had no hands-on way to teach space engineering, and the commercial kits were expensive and never actually flew. The challenge was a kit a school could afford that would survive a balloon flight to 40 km and come back with data.

What I did

  • Built the satellite systems on Arduino and Raspberry Pi and went through more than 25 3-D printed prototypes.
  • Redesigned the kit for low cost and for assembly by students — fewer parts, printable geometry, steps a teenager can follow — which cut the production cost by 44%.
  • Tested the prototypes at the National Space Center of Kazakhstan and flew them on stratospheric balloons.
Stratospheric balloon launch
Launch day.
Satellite kit with deployed panels on a stand
A kit with its panels deployed.
Technical drawings of the kit structure
The kit structure.
Receiving the Space Tech Battle prize
Space Tech Battle at Astana Hub.
Clean room at the National Space Center
At the National Space Center of Kazakhstan.
Team in the lab
In the lab.

How it turned out

The kits flew to over 40 km. We raised $15K, delivered 80+ kits to 240+ students across 25+ schools, won a $5,000 prize at Astana Hub’s Space Tech Battle, and Forbes Kazakhstan listed SkillSat among its Top-3 SpaceTech and Top-15 EdTech startups.