SSETI Express was the first spacecraft to be designed and built by European students and was launched by the European Space Agency.SSETI Express (SSETI being the acronym for Student Space Exploration and Technology Initiative) is a small spacecraft, similar in size and shape to a washing machine. On board the student-built spacecraft were three CubeSat pico-satellites, extremely small satellites weighing around one kg each. These were deployed one hour and forty minutes after launch. 23 university groups, working from locations spread across Europe and with very different cultural backgrounds, worked together via the internet to jointly create the satellite. The expected lifetime of the mission was planned to be 2 months. Express is the fastest developed micro-satellite in history.