The VEGA launcher for the VV19 mission carried the first of four planned satellites of the European Pléiades Neo constellation and also 'hosted' four CubeSats, including LEDSAT.

The project, developed by students and researchers at the S5Lab - Sapienza Space Systems and Space Surveillance Laboratory, is coordinated by Fabrizio Piergentili and Fabio Santoni of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (Dima) and the Department of Astronautical, Electrical and Energy Engineering (Diaee), respectively, at Sapienza. The mission was designed in collaboration with the University of Michigan, while ASI supports the satellite development as part of the IKUNS (Italian-Kenyan University Nano-Satellites) Programme. This is the third IKUNS satellite to be launched, following the success of 1KUNS-PF, whose mission ended in summer 2020, and WildTrackCube-SIMBA, which has been in orbit since March 2021.

Like its predecessors, therefore, LEDSAT also saw the involvement of students from Kenyan universities in some specific areas of the design and development of the flight elements and the Ground Segment, with technical-scientific aims but also an educational value, as well as benefits in a broader sense thanks to the collaboration with Italy for space activities.

The 1U sized CubeSat LEDSAT (100 x 100 x 113.5 mm) will demonstrate an innovative navigation and tracking method for small satellites and will be equipped with 140 LED light-emitting diodes capable of being tracked by ground-based telescopes. They will only be able to determine the satellite's orbit and reconstruct its attitude by running flashes of the various LEDSAT faces, the patterns of which have been specially designed to maximise satellite tracking and ease of attitude reconstruction. Four and two Sapienza students and members of the LEDSAT team respectively took part in the activities carried out and completed in Brno and Kourou.

The LEDSAT project was selected in 2017 for the second edition of ESA's "Fly Your Satellite!" programme, which provides technical support for satellite development, organises technical reviews for the different phases of the project and offers a launch opportunity for the CubeSats that benefit from it.