European CanSat Competition (Day 3)

The day started with the final presentations. Each group presented their projects and their collected data and data analyses and interpretation. Then the judges were given five minutes to ask questions. Then the judges were given a couple of hours to discuss the presentations and chose a winner and the winners were announced and the prizes given.

Group foto (Morten, Tobias, Sigurd, Anna and Ole) 

Group presentations

Watching the group presentations

Live-Stream of Website to Our School

The live-stream of our website was successful and the footage was watch by our class in Denmark. They sent us a video that they filmed of themselves watching the launch on one of the whiteboards in a classroom at school. In the background you can hear them talking and commenting on changes that they are seeing on the grafs in Danish. The class have worked themselves with CanSats in class for an extent essay in physics and mathematics that we wrote over the course of a week at the end of this school year, called SRO. We used CanSats to perform a vertical drop with air resistance and oblique roll without air resistance. We then wrote differential equations for a theoretical vertical drop with air resistance and oblique roll without air resistance and compared them to the data we had measured with the CanSats.

Link to video:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/slosr2p9gi3ng41/XiaoYing_Video_1435331994406.mp4?dl=0

Our class doing data collection with their CanSats for vertical drop with air resistance

Pressure Kanon Test

We used a pressure kanon to test that the CanSat was sturdy enough to withstand being shut out of the rocket. The pressure kanon consist of a chamber that we pump with air using a compressor till we have a pressure of 7 bars. On top of this chamber there is a cylinder in which a soda fits perfectly that we had especially made by a blacksmith on Mols, who was so nice to lend us his assists. When we open the air valve the pressure of the air pushes the CanSat out of the cylinder and it flies in a parable. 

Pressure Canon

Pressure Chamber

European CanSat Competition 2015 (Day 2)

The day began with a briefing for the launch and preparations of our CanSat. Due to cloudy weather we were an hour and a half delayed. Luckily, the weather cleared up and they were able to launch our rocket, as planned with delayed, and the launch was successful. Before the rocket was launched, our CanSat reached on acceleration of 2G and the speaker began playing the theme song of Star Wars. The personal at the launch site was not aware that our CanSat played music, so they thought that it was someone's phone that was disrupting their communications. And when they discovered it was our CanSat, they had a good laugh about it. Our CanSat was recovered very quickly due to the music, even before we gave them our GPS coordinates. We received telemetry during the entire launch and our CanSat was recovered and the data received by telemetry matched that on the SD-card. The live-stream of data on our website worked during descent. We are now going to spend the next handful of hours processing the collected data and preparing for our final presentation.

Launch Field

Ground Station

Tobias and Morten discussing the set up of our ground station

Preparing the CanSat for launch 

Sigurd speaking to our classmates in Denmark, who watched the launch live on our website 

Launch of the rocket containing our CanSat

Anna recording a report of the launch for P1. Sigurd and Tobias are holding the antenna and Morten is running the website.

Data processing

Website

We have created a website, on which we hope that our collected data from the launch will be shown live. How we wanted to challenge ourselves in the process of creating a website, was that we wanted to program the entire website from scratch, using php and html. We have not chosen to display all the data that our CanSat measures, as we fear that the website will become too chaotic for the reader.

Grafs:

• Altitude as a function of time
• Acceleration as a function of time
• Temperature as a function of time

Our CanSat also measures UV radiation, visible light, humidity and creates a light spectrum using a spectrophotometer. The CanSat also films its descent. You can view all of the processed data on our final powerpoint that I will link to on this blog.

Link to website: 

gladkristen.dk/cansat/Live3.php

Morten and Ole hard at work

European CanSat Competition 2015 (Day 1)

We started the day with an opening ceremony where representatives from the different institutions that are hosting and supporting the competition gave a series of short speech. They congratulated the teams for making it to the final and emphasised the importance of motivated students full of curiosity   being given the chance to explore original ideas in the field of space. They encourage the different teams to talk to each other and learn about the other teams projects and different methods of working. ESA is first of all an international organisation.

Then we were given time to prepare for our introductory presentations and technical inspection for our flight test. The flight test consist of the teams flight engineer going up in a plane and dropping the CanSat to check the speed of descent and that everything works in preparation for the launch tomorrow.

Thought out the day we also worked on updating our blog and recording segments for P1 Videnskabens Verden.

Recording Segment for P1 Videnskabens Verden

Opening Ceremony

Preparing for technical inspection 

Technical inspection

CanSat deployed from plan 

Sigurd in his "flyverdragt"

Sigurd preparing for departure 

Ground Station 

Launch Field

Goal For Our Outreach Program

The reason why we have put so much time and energy into our outreach program is that the sciences are not very popular fields in Denmark in middle and high schools. We hope that by building CanSats with the 8th grade classes at Rønde Privatskole and traveling about the country speaking at panels and giving interviews about CanSat we are able to inspire young students interested in the sciences. Tell them about what you can become with a background in science and show them that people with a passion for science are not just nerds, we also party and go to the movies. We just happen to love to program arduinos in our free time. The clubs and projects available to students interested in science are not very well known and the entire team have all been involved in other science projects prior to CanSat. We have all had an interest in science from a young age. Hence, we have also talked about these, so that students with a passion for science are aware of the projects that they can get involved in and cultivate their passion.

Teams at the European CanSat Competition