Competition results!

The Final competition was a huge success! Despite the issues we encountered the day before the launch, we were able to design and make last minute parts and make modifications and continued on with our launch. Lumos 1 and Lumos 2 Separated and landed in 2 different zones collecting the appropriate data! After analysing and processing the results we presented our findings to the judges. It was an incredibly close call with team Cyclone coming Third, Aurora coming Second and the Caniners coming First!

Congratulations to all the teams who participated!

Pre-Competiton and Workspaces Video

With just 1 day to go until the 2016 UK CanSat competition in York, we thought we'd share a fun little video of our work spaces and unseen footage from throughout the year.
With our final can printed, assembled and programmed, we are ready to travel down to York and launch our satellite on Friday10th March!
We will update our Twitter frequently over the next few days to let you all know how we're getting on, stay tuned!

Primary Mission Test and Outreach Update

After completing our primary mission, we tested our Lumos2 can by taking it to Maxwell Park and flying up with our DJI Phantom drone! We transmitted our primary mission data to the ground successfully, as well as GPS data, and live plotted it at the ground station.
We are close to completing our secondary mission, and more videos will be up in the coming weeks.
Next week, we are speaking at an S1 assembly to try and inspire the younger pupils to get involved in  technology, and school clubs in general. The following week we are speaking at our school-wide assembly, and are announcing our charity outreach project before we head down to York on the 10th March 2016!

Second Sponsor!

We are proud to announce our newest sponsor CEL, makers of the 3D printer ROBOX. We have been using the ROBOX 3D printer for our CanSat extensively. It's highly accurate 0.3mm head has enabled us to print critical parts for our satellite with utmost precision and quality. Fast print times and ease of use have allowed us to produce many prototype parts for testing, which has boosted our development process significantly. We are now approaching the final stages of our build, final parts are arriving and final changes to the design are being made before a full prototype is printed for real life test.

Primary Mission Completed!

After a very busy week we have finally completed programming our primary mission! With temperature and pressure being transmitted from one pyboard to another with 1 second interval between each measurement that is taken. We hope to increase this to 2 readings a second. Further testing and optimisation will be done this week, as well as designing a central hub application where all the data about each satellite can be monitored such as live plotting of data.
We have now also created a Github account so that we can share with you all of our modules that we have and will be programming for all everything that we will be using.

Click here to visit!

New Year

Happy New Year! We've definitely hit the ground running in the start of 2016, our second batch of components has arrived and we are well under way with our secondary mission! More videos are on the way soon, as well as updates about our new plans for outreach and promotion within and without the school. 

Once we have 3D printed both halves of our can -Lumos1 and Lumos2- we will be able to test our data gathering, analysis and telemetry in the field, and be able to tinker and eventually finalise all aspects of our primary mission.

Be sure to follow us on Twitter to see our more recent updates, and keep an eye on our Vimeo page for upcoming content in 2016!

Progress Report 2

Our December progress report is now available on the website for you to view! We also have a new video uploaded on Vimeo which will give you an idea of what its like to be part of the CANSAT competition. Check it out here!

Lumos 2 Mechanics Video

Our first video is up on Vimeo! It's a quick video showing the motion of our Lumos 2 can propellers. This is the half of the can that will descend to the ground using a quadcopter-like landing system, and is what our main focus is on right now.

We have also got our Primary Mission data collection sorted, and are now working to get our wireless data transmission working. We will soon add a Software page to the website, where all our code and scripts will be posted, as well as any tutorials related to the project.

Parts Arrival

We finally have all our parts for Lumos 2 and the ground station!

Work on the electronics, hardware assembly and software will begin immediately. This will include tweaking and reprinting our shell to better fit the components and ensuring all the components work in harmony with each other in the most efficient way possible.

Updates to Website

As of this week there have been a number of changes to the website that you may have noticed. First of all, our first Progress Report is now available to view online on our Documents page, and our progress meters have been updated accordingly.

Perhaps more obvious is the addition of the Finance section to the website, where we will add every component that we buy to the spreadsheet, and update the total cost. As the project advances, we will be able to display the cost per each module, and the cost of the ground stations, and ensure that we are well within out budget of £500.

In the next couple of weeks we plan to upload some videos to our Vimeo page - including time lapses, demos and more - as well as beginning construction and programming! Updates of our progress will be made on Twitter.

Sketches 003-004

Sketch 003
Secondary Mission Finalised Proposal

Sketch 004
Secondary Mission Finalised Aim and Basis

Sketches 001-002

Sketch 001
Secondary Mission Initial Proposition

Sketch 002
Secondary Mission Aim and Basis

Outreach Programme

For our outreach section, the team will be managing their online presence on Twitter and Vimeo -links can be found at the bottom of this page-  positing regular updates, sketches, designs and tutorials on various aspects of the project.

To gain publicity for the team, we are planning on initially raising awareness within our school to get people interested in our team, and to inspire the younger pupils to form their own teams in the future. After this, we hope to publish a short article about our project and team in local papers and or newsletters, as well as local advertisers.

The best way to keep up to date is to visit this blog, where our most recent tweets are displayed and any videos posted on Vimeo will also be posted on here. We will also allow our progress reports to be downloaded on our Documents page.

If you wish to contact us you can mail us at cansataurora@gmail.com, or tweet us!

One Small Step

After weeks of spitballing and library installations the team is finally ready to begin construction on the CanSat. A few things have changed from our initial specification for the project, mainly concerning the secondary mission. We have decided to focus mainly on a targeted landing system, where the CanSat will use GPS to locate itself, and will then move itself in relation to a defined landing spot using wings/parafoil (TBD). As well as this, an accelerometer will be included to calculate how long it takes for the satellite to reach its maximum velocity/average force acted upon CanSat by gravity. We will also try and include solar panels within the project to power some components. This however is just an initial proposition for the mission, and may vary until we confirm it later next week.

We'll be spending the majority of our time now completing the primary mission to get it out of the way, giving us more time to spend on our secondary mission. To try and gain publicity for our team, we are promoting the blog within the school, and plan on giving talks to physics/computing enthusiasts in lower years in the school.

Over the next 4 weeks the first progress report will be compiled, which will include various sketches and designs of our CanSat shell and electronics, as well as information on how we plan to tackle our secondary mission. The progress indicators will be updated on the blog regularly, and the report will be available on October 31st.

An Introduction to the Competition

The following is an extract from the official ESERO guidelines for the CanSat 2016 competition:

"ESA wishes to foster and support a broad range of CanSat activities across its Member States, in order to give European high school students their first experience of a real space-related project. ESA has organised five previous European CanSat Competitions in 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015.

The UK branch of the European Space Education Resources Office (ESERO-UK) organises the UK CanSat Competition. The winner of the UK competition may go on to compete in the European CanSat Competition.

A CanSat is a simulation of a real satellite, integrated within the volume and shape of a soft drink can. The challenge for the students is to fit all the major subsystems found in a satellite, such as power, sensors and a communication system, into this minimal volume. The CanSat is then launched to an altitude of a few hundred metres by a rocket or dropped from a platform or captive balloon and its mission begins: to carry out a scientific experiment and achieve a safe landing.

CanSats offer a unique opportunity for students to have a first practical experience of a real space project. They are responsible for all aspects: selecting the mission objectives, designing the CanSat, integrating the components, testing, preparing for launch and then analysing the data."