OreSat 0.5 is a cube satellite being engineered by students and industry advisors at the Portland State Aerospace Society (PSAS). It is due to be launched into orbit at the end of May 2024. The satellite has a circuit board with an attached camera devoted to star tracking. Fixed onto this board and all the major circuit boards constituting OreSat 0.5 is a type of microchip often referred to as a system-on-chip (SoC), which provides a full computer operating system for each of the satellite’s components. This enables students to readily develop fully integrated and configurable software systems that control the entire satellite and communicate with ground stations on Earth. The star-tracking software is partially comprised of highly mathematical programs from NASA and student colleagues at the University of Washington’s HuskySat Lab. These programs and algorithms inform the satellite of its orientation relative to Earth, or “attitude,” by comparing images captured by the camera to a star catalog. OreSat 0.5 can then relay this information to other onboard software to adjust its attitude using onboard magnetorquers. The software of OreSat 0.5 is built around the Python programming language, which provides extensibility to lower-level languages like C that consume less memory. Python is a widely used modern programming language that facilitates collaboration and ease of use. This promotion of active and accessible participation is tantamount to the OreSat team’s open-source credo; seeking to further opportunities for entry to students and researchers alike interested in the production and utilization of cube satellites