It was developed under the Philippine Scientific Earth Observation Microsatellite program (PHL-Microsat) and was jointly implemented by the University of the Philippines and the Department of Science and Technology as part of the Kyushu Institute of Technology-led multinational second Joint Global Multi-nations Birds Satellite (Birds-2).

The government agency said that Filipino graduate students, Joven Javier and Adrian Salces attending Kyushu Institute of Technology (KIT), Japan were working on developing a satellite with their mentors which at that time was still to be named.

[2] The PHL-Microsat team suggested the satellite to be named after the Maya, a local term for a certain varieties of bird in the Philippines.

[8] Javier, who was also the overall project manager of Birds-2, served as the Electronics PCB Designer of Maya-1 while Salces was responsible for developing the satellite's Ground Station Segment and Communication Subsystem.

[3] Maya-1 was launched to space on 29 June 2018, via the Falcon 9 Full Thrust rocket at Cape Canaveral in Florida, United States as part of the SpaceX CRS-15 Commercial Resupply Service mission.

A few days after their deployment, amateur ground stations from ten participating nations of the Birds project confirmed communication with the three satellites.

[2] The mission of Maya-1 was "experimental testing of commercial apparatus" and due to its size, it was to provide "a cost-effective educational platform" to help Filipinos build future satellites.