Florida Space Institute (FSI)

The Florida Space Institute provides unique, practice-based educational opportunities, combined with resources to design, build, and test small satellites, instruments, and payloads. Using these resources FSI supports member schools and other educational and commercial customers, providing opportunities for student involvement in real-world space programs. FSI is a State of Florida Type I Institute headquartered at UCF, but has 10 member schools statewide. Because FSI is located at the Space Center and not on the UCF campus, the programs are embedded within the existing space environment of the Center, at both the NASA/Kennedy Space Center and the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station locations. Typical research areas include small satellite innovations, broadband optical communications, electric propulsion, instrumentation development, space weather, and space power, driving engineering solutions with science requirements.

In addition to traditional classrooms, FSI has complete laboratories for supporting research projects, a satellite ground station, and a launch site for launching suborbital rockets to space. Additionally, we utilize the Space Center as a laboratory to perform field experiments. This combination of capabilities provides students with an unequalled opportunity to obtain an education with experience, through practice-based teaching, in the areas of space science and engineering.