http://www.mdpi.com/journal/machines Latest open access articles published in Machines at http://www.mdpi.com/journal/machines http://www.mdpi.com/2075-1702/1/1/1 The preliminary design for the Open Prototype for Educational NanoSats (OPEN) demonstration spacecraft, OpenOrbiter, is presented. OPEN is designed to facilitate the formation of CubeSat development programs nationally and worldwide via providing a publically-available set of spacecraft design documents, implementation and testing plans. These documents should allow the creation of a 1-U CubeSat with a parts budget of approximately $ 5,000. This allows spacecraft development to be incorporated in regular curriculum and supported from teaching (as opposed to research) funds. The OPEN design, implemented by OpenOrbiter, has an innovative internal structure, separates payload and operations processing and includes features to ease and highlight errors in integration. Machines 2013-01-24 1 1 Article 10.3390/mach1010001 1 32 2075-1702 2013-01-24 doi: 10.3390/mach1010001 Jeremy Straub Christoffer Korvald Anders Nervold Atif Mohammad Noah Root Nicholas Long Donovan Torgerson