University of Chile SUCHAI Program

The SUCHAI Program is the satellite and space-science research effort of the Universidad de Chile, carried out through the Space and Planetary Exploration Laboratory within the university's Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (FCFM). Undergraduate and graduate students from the university's electrical engineering, physics and mechanical engineering departments design, build, launch and operate picosatellites as part of their training, with the program aiming to give students hands-on experience across the full satellite life cycle.

SUCHAI-1, a 1U CubeSat carrying a Langmuir probe for ionospheric studies, a camera and a GPS receiver, launched on 23 June 2017 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in India and was Chile's first domestically built satellite. SUCHAI-2 and SUCHAI-3, 1U and 3U CubeSats respectively, launched together on 1 April 2022 on a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral; SUCHAI-3 received U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research funding to demonstrate inter-satellite communications and space-weather sensing as part of the university's first small-satellite swarm, and the resulting communications technology was later folded into SUCHAI-2's operations.

A fourth mission, SUCHAI-4, has been referenced as a planned continuation of the swarm work. The program is funded through Chilean university and government research grants together with international scientific partnerships rather than commercial sales, and its satellites remain focused on ionospheric and magnetospheric research rather than operational services.