BIRDS Project
Taking Scotland's National Drink to Space
Overview
Glasgow University Orbit (GUO), in partnership with the University of Glasgow (UofG) and Kyushu Institute of Technology (Kyutech) in Japan, is developing a payload for the BIRDS project, a 2U CubeSat mission that will carry a slice of Scottish culture into orbit.
Kyutech leads the BIRDS mission overall, designing and building the satellite bus and operating the spacecraft once launched. The University of Glasgow, working closely with Dr. Gilles Bailet, has been entrusted with designing the payload occupying 1U of the satellite, space shared with National Taiwan Normal University's own experiment. GUO's Master's students are coordinating the design effort across all five payloads, turning ideas generated by GUO's wider membership into a flight-ready package.
To view specific details, please visit Kyutech's official page here.
Five Payloads, One Mission
The result of this collaboration is a set of five interconnected payloads, each pushing the boundaries of what a small satellite can do:
Whisky Fermentation Unit (WFU): Investigates whether the alcoholic fermentation process can be used to produce ethanol in orbit, laying groundwork for in-situ manufacturing on future space stations and long-duration missions, while celebrating Scotland's whisky heritage along the way.
Whisky Ageing Unit (WAU): Picks up where fermentation leaves off, testing the whisky ageing process in microgravity. Success here could mean the world's first whisky aged in space, forging a fitting link between Scottish and Japanese whisky traditions.
PCB-Integrated Reaction Wheel (IRW): Explores a novel, miniaturised approach to spacecraft attitude control by integrating a reaction wheel's motor directly into a printed circuit board, tested through a rotisserie thermal management application that also helps keep the CubeSat's temperature balanced.
Deployable Selfie Camera (DSC): Captures images of the satellite itself, giving the mission a relatable, human face while doubling as a source of Earth observation imagery for testing onboard image-processing capabilities.
Payload Data Handling Unit (PDHU): The mission's data backbone, processing and storing information from all payloads for downlink to the ground station and giving GUO's next-generation PQ60 computer its first flight heritage.
Why It Matters
Beyond the novelty of space whisky, this mission demonstrates real engineering value: in-space chemical production, miniaturised attitude control hardware, and high-performance onboard data processing are all technologies with applications far beyond a single CubeSat. The project also builds international collaboration between Scotland and Japan, and gives GUO's student engineers hands-on experience delivering a real space payload from concept to launch.
The Road Ahead
GUO's Master's students are working toward a preliminary Payload Unit design, integrating all five payloads within strict mass, budget, and safety constraints, ready to hand over to Kyutech University for final integration into the BIRDS CubeSat. During this period, four of GUO's Master's students will head to Japan to partner with Kyutech University students for continued progress.