"Satellite 15“ is a team from EEB3 that participated in the CanSat 2021-2022 competition. The team consists of 6 Greek S6 students: Iasonas Balkamos, Stella Foinikianaki, Andreas Michalakopoulos, Dimitrios Psaroudakis, Agathi Titsia and Eleftherios Tzafalias. CanSat is an initiative of the European Space Agency (ESA) which supports national CanSat events with the help of local organisations. In Belgium the competition is organised and financially supported by Innoviris. CanSat is a simulation of a real satellite, integrated within the volume and shape of a soft drink can. The challenge is to fit all the major subsystems found in a satellite like power supply, sensors and a communication system, in such a minimal volume. The CanSat is launched to an altitude of around 1000 metres by a rocket and then released. Each team needs to fulfil two missions: 1) to keep track of three basic measurements: temperature, atmospheric pressure and velocity 2) to think of an interesting scientific experiment to carry out during the descent. Furthermore, there has to be a communication system between the satellite and the ground station that usually consists of an RF transceiver and a Yagi antenna. It is also important to achieve a safe landing, at a 8-10 m/s descent speed, using a self-made parachute. We wanted to find an experiment off the beaten track. We therefore chose to measure the speed of the CanSat with an alternative method: the Pitot Tube, a device used to measure fluid flow velocity. The Pitot Tube is widely used in the aerospace industry, so the biggest challenge of our experiment was to fit a functional tube in our can (which was of a much smaller scale). In order to verify the accuracy of our method we decided to add a secondary method of calculating the velocity by using a barometric sensor that can measure the atmospheric pressure, and thus the altitude. We also added a 3-axis accelerometer to find out the CanSat's position and the inclination during the descent, as this could be a major source of random errors. After 4 rounds of elimination and a presentation in front of an expert jury, we managed to qualify for the finals of the competition together with 23 other teams. On the 6th of May we arrived at the Elsenborn military camp where we executed the launch. We were satisfied with the results of our experiment as the two velocity measurements were very close to each other throughout the descent.
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