The Laboratory for Advanced Space Systems at Illinois is the University of Illinois’ premier space design and testing workspace. LASSI supports students, faculty, and other customers utilizing small satellite resources designed, developed, and tested at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In the next two years, LASSI will expand into a new laboratory space to be built as an extension to Talbot Laboratory.

Michael F. Lembeck, Ph.D., a Professor of Practice in the Aerospace Engineering Department, is Director of the Laboratory for Advanced Space Systems at Illinois (LASSI). Dr. Lembeck has led or worked on multiple government and commercial spaceflight programs, including JPL’s Galileo Jupiter Orbiter, Space Industries, Inc.’s Wake Shield Facility, Orbital Sciences’ OrbView/Warfighter commercial remote sensing program, NASA’s Vision for Space Exploration, and the Boeing commercial crew program.

Our first satellite, CubeSail, was launched in December, 2018 on a Rocket Lab Electron rocket from New Zealand. CubeSail’s mission culminates in the deployment demonstration of a 260 m long solar reflecting film ribbon in mid-2020.