We are currently building our Cansat for the Cansat Competition held this year in Abilene Texas.
The American Astronautical Society (AAS) and American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) have organized an annual student design-build-launch competition for space-related topics. Although similar competitions exist for other fields of engineering (robots, radio-control airplanes, racing cars, etc.), most space-related competitions are paper design competitions. While these are worthwhile, they do not give students the satisfaction of being involved with the end-to-end life cycle of a complex engineering project, from conceptual design, through integration and test, actual operation of the system and concluding with a post-mission summary and debrief. This competition fulfills that need!
This annual competition is open to teams from universities and colleges. Teams must be able to design and build a space-type system, following the approved competition guide, and then compete against each at the end of two semesters to determine the winners. Rockets will be provided but teams are responsible for funding the construction of their CanSat and all travel/lodging expenses.
MISSION:
The mission is to launch an autonomous cansat with a deployable lander containing one large raw hen egg. The cansat shall be made of two parts, the carrier and the lander. The carrier holds and releases the lander. Cansat refers to the complete system containing the carrier and lander. The cansat will be deployed from a rocket at an altitude range of 914 meters to 1128 meters. The cansat must transmit GPS position and telemetry every two seconds until landing.
When the cansat reaches 500 meters after deployment, the carrier must deploy the lander containing one large raw hen egg. The lander must land without damaging the egg. The descent rate of the cansat carrier after deployment must be between 3 and 5 meters per second. Sensor data other than GPS must be used to determine the descent rate. The lander containing the large raw hen egg must have a descent rate of 4 to 7 meters per second. In the lander, a sensor must be used to determine the descent rate of the payload. The data can be recorded and retrieved after recovery.
Based on the GPS data collected, predict the landing position of the lander before recovering the payload.
Develop a ground station to collect all the telemetry from the cansat carrier and predict the landing position of the lander.
Optional Objective Requirements
Each team shall select ONE of the following options as part of their mission design.
1.The lander cansat shall measure the impact force.
2.Following separation of the lander, the carrier shall obtain images in the nadir direction, with at least one image containing the lander in it. The images shall be stored on-board the carrier for post-processing following recovery. The team is free to telemeter the images to the ground, however, no points shall be awarded for this.
QSET winning 2nd place at the 2010 Cansat Competition
