The University of Toronto's Space Flight Laboratory operates the Canadian Advanced Nanospace eXperiment program in order to develop low-cost nanosatellites for education and research. Building of the laboratory's expertise in microsatellite system design, this unique program trains highly skilled space system engineers for the Canadian public and private sectors while producing low-cost, quick-to-launch satellite platforms for the scientific and engineering communities. Major projects completed through this program include the CanX-2 nanosatellite, which stands to be one of the most advanced in its class through sophistication and capability.Master's students at the Space Flight Laboratory channel their various backgrounds into highly qualified areas of expertise by developing key subsystems for CanX missions. This thesis will describe the development of the passive thermal control subsystem for CanX-2, and the preliminary design of the attitude determination and control subsystem for the CanX-3 astronomy mission and the CanX-4 & CanX-5 formation flight mission.