Carleton University’s Ravens Knights team has earned second place at the 2016 CanSat Competition, held in Burkett, Texas from June 10 to 12, 2016.
The annual NASA-sponsored competition brings together university and college engineering teams from around the world to design, build and launch their own aerospace system.
Organized by the American Astronautical Society (AAS) and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), the competition challenges teams to simulate the launch of a space probe through a planet’s atmosphere, where it collects atmospheric data during flight.
The Ravens Knights team designed a rocket-deployed glider for the competition, fully equipped with sensors, two wings and a tail, housed inside a protective container with a parachute, said team leader and recent aerospace engineering grad, Graham Blackport.
During competition, the glider was launched into the sky by a rocket, released at an altitude of 3300 ft. (1 km) and deployed from its container. It then gathered data on atmospheric pressure and temperature, GPS information and transmitted images to the ground during flight.
This year’s competition included a total of 40 teams. Each was graded on how well they met a checklist that included gathering specific data, gliding for up to 135 seconds and releasing their glider at an altitude of approximately 1300 ft. (400 m).
“Exciting and stressful and hectic” is how Blackport described the final competition this month.
Out of the four nights the team spent in Texas, he slept for just two.
“It was a lot of fun though,” he said, and a great learning experience.
“It gives you a chance to go through the end-to-end lifecycle of a project,” Blackport said of the competition. “From being given requirements for what you have to do, to having design reviews, to having to actually build and test it.”
A second 10-person Carleton team, the Ravens Squires, competed for the first time this year and placed 21st out of the 40 teams.
Blackport said student interest in the Carleton CanSat group spiked after the Knights’ third-place victory last year, bringing in enough new members to form a second team for 2016.
Both the Knights and Squires are comprised of students from different years and programs in Carleton’s research-intensive Faculty of Engineering and Design, including Aerospace Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and Biomedical and Mechanical Engineering.
Their trip to Texas was supported by nearly $4,000 in donations made to their FutureFunder campaign.
By: Kirsten Fenn
