CanSat ready for the initial technical inspection

19 December 2014

ESA Education is happy to announce the names of the seven teams selected for the 2015 European CanSat Competition, which will take place in Portugal from 25 to 28 June 2015. The selected teams will join the 10 winning teams of national CanSat competitions for an unforgettable experience.

ESA’s Education Office has been inviting secondary school students to take part in the European CanSat competitions since 2010. The European CanSat competition is part of ESA’s initiative to inspire young people in pursuing a career in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields, with the ultimate goal of ensuring the availability of a highly qualified workforce in the space industry of the future. The competing teams are either winners of national CanSat competitions, or directly selected by ESA.

The following teams were selected to build, test, and launch their own CanSat project:

• Alpsatfrom BG/BRG Stainach (Austria) will measure position and height with GPS, acceleration, 3-dimensional positions with different methods, and a camera for Earth observation.
• AzorSat from Instituto de Eduación Secundaria La Canal Petrer, Spain, will approach a given point during the descend based upon the pictures taken by the camera while descending and move once on the ground with two wheels.
• GirlsSAT 2015 from the Secondary Technical School of Electrotechnical Engineering in Prague (Czech Republic) will demonstrate microgravity while testing a transceiver with automatic data processing and plotting.
• g-Rosetta from the 1st School Laboratory Center of Athens and the 1st Vocational School of Agii Anargiri (Greece) will measure the resistance of air with a free falling capsule that transmits acceleration to the Ground Station in realtime through the CanSat.
• Rosseta-Can from Colegio Retamar, Pozuelo de Alarcon, Madrid (Spain), will compare two descent data sets, the CanSat, and an attached probe named Philae.
• Sky Shepherd from the Istituto Adone Zoli from Atri, Abruzzo (Italy) will detect and measure the variations of solar radiation and air pollution while studying an efficient landing system.
• TechSwarm from V Liceum OgólnoksztaÅ‚cÄ…ce im. Augusta Witkowskiego in Kraków (Poland), will measure the magnetic field and environmental conditions with full panorama transmitted pictures using a rotating camera.

Last minute modifications before launch

This year, up to 18 launch slots are available. In addition to the ESA selection, national competition organisers automatically have a place reserved for their winning team. Twelve of them are also expected to take part in the 2015 competition.

Once again the selection process proved challenging, with over 30 proposals received from different ESA Member States that did not yet have a national competition in their respective countries.

Seven of these teams were selected to take part in the Launch Campaign that will take place at the Santa Cruz Air Field, 60 km north of Lisbon, Portugal, from 25 to 28 June 2015.

Each team is comprised of  4 to 10 secondary school students aged 16 years or more, and assisted by a teacher or tutor. ESA invited the teachers of the chosen teams to attend an introductory workshop at ESA’s ESTEC centre in The Netherlands, which will take place between 28 and 30 January 2015. Each teacher will receive training on topics such as sensors and signal analysis, data handling and transmission, software installation and programming, and will be given a CanSat kit.

The teams will develop their projects and regularly submit Progress Reports to ESA, who will in turn send feedback to the teams and decide if the CanSats are flightworthy upon arrival at the Launch Campaign.

ESA Education would like to express sincere appreciation to all the teams that replied to the Call for Proposals. Â They encourage them to apply again next year and to keep updated with their country’s opportunities.

More information related to the competition can be found here:

2015 European CanSat Competition Guidelines

How to set a National CanSat Competition

Contact: cansat@esa.int