The ARLISS Project is a collaborative effort between students and faculty at universities (and some high schools) around the world, and high power rocketry enthusiasts in Northern California, to build, launch, test and recover prototype satellites, miniaturized to fit inside a soft drink can (hence "CanSats") in preparation for an Earth orbit or Mars orbit space launch.

ARLISS and the CanSat project challenge innovative students to get hands-on experience in the life-cycle (one year or less) of a space project. Each CanSat team will design and build one or more satellites, and travel to the launch site in Black Rock, Nevada to supervise preparation, launch, telemetry download and safe recovery of their experiments and data.

The ARLISS rocketry group provides launch vehicles and services, each capable of lofting and safely deploying one or more CanSats at an altitude of 12,000' AGL, affording each CanSat a "hang time" in the air of about 15 minutes for experiments, simulating a horizon-to-horizon low orbit pass.

Marking our twentieth year, ARLISS has grown to embrace more satellite missions, more launch profiles, more launch sites and more students.

ARLISS missions not only include flight data collection and telemetry, but integrate autonomous robots to direct satellites back to designated locations at the launch site.   And not only returning autonomously, but flying sophisticated science missions.

The ARLISS scope of launch profiles provide launch vehicles to carry a .3 Kg CanSat to 5k' AGL with sensors and telemetry, a 1 Kg Open Classic satellite to deploy into a airplane to autonomously return to its launch site from 12kk' AGL, or a PocketQube or CanSat to 120k' AGL with ARLISS Extreme.

The core ARLISS experience is at Black Rock Nevada with ARLISS Cansat missions being flown wherever there are students and ARLISS fliers.