The heritage of launched educational missions involving CubeSats shows a non-negligible number of failures that causes low level of success of these missions. The workforce is generally inexperienced, the budget is limited, short development time, the use of components off the shelf (with high performance but not designed for hostile operative environment) and reduced and inadequate verification campaigns are the main root causes of this unsuccessful trend. All these factors contribute to a high percentage of dead-on-arrival spacecrafts: 20% of launched CubeSats have never been operative, not even for the first contact with a ground station. Moreover, the infant mortality is relevant.