Meet the team: The Flying Dutchcan
| Teacher: | Sanna Heinonen & Nina Markham |
| Team members: | Alexander Gamble and Stephen Markham (Programming, data collection and data analysis); Brian Kenyon, Carsten Spencer and Nikita Sozonov (Sensors, circuit boards and after landing retrieval system); Stefanie van der Zee, Nadine van der Laan, Jyona Jacobs, Natalia Weber, Nadia Merza (Parachute, testing, fundraising and publicity) |
| School: | American International School of Rotterdam |
| Country: | The Netherlands |
Description of the CanSat missions
We will design a CanSat that, on descent, will measure temperature, pressure, light intensity, and altitude. As society becomes more and more urbanized there is the need to continue to build not only out but also up. With the continued loss of agricultural and ground space, innovative ways of using the rooftops of our buildings will be employed. As societies move their gardening and perhaps solar power sources up to the roof tops, the question will arise what the optimal altitude will be. Since the CanSats are launched to an altitude of 1 km (currently the height of the world’s tallest building), it will be beneficial to use the CanSat to determine optimal heights for agriculture and solar power collection devices based on their need for light intensity. An additional benefit of such data could be assessing UV light irregularities at different global locations, indicating breaches of the ozone layer.
Progress
The Flying Dutchcan team has tested the radio transmission of our data within a building. The sensors are all functioning and transmitting data. However, we have concerns that the temperature sensor itself slowly heats the circuit board, bringing into question the validity of the data. We have to investigate more into this problem, however, time is running out.
We have tested our parchute and string strength by attaching to the back of a car and driving to 35 km/hr as well as attaching to a bicycle and driving full speed. It all holds up.
We have a basic assembly of our CanSat.