CanSat Helps Students Make & Launch Sub-Orbital 'Satellites' (Video)

Video CanSat Helps Students Make & Launch Sub-Orbital 'Satellites' (Video) 22

Posted by Roblimo on Tuesday July 21, 2015 @04:42PM from the up-up-and-away-in-my-beautiful-rocket-or-balloon dept.

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The Magnitude (motto: "Powered by Curiosity") "Can-sized satellites" aren't technically satellites because they're launched on rockets that typically can't get much higher than 10,000 feet, or as payloads on weather balloons that can hit 100,000+ feet but (obviously) can't go beyond the Earth's atmosphere. But could they be satellites? Sure. Get a rocket with enough punch to put them in orbit and off you go -- something Magnitude Co-founder and CEO Ted Tagami hopes to see happening in his local school district by 2020. Meanwhile, they'll sell you assembled CanSat packages or help you build your own (or anything in between), depending on your schools resources and aspirations. Have a question or an idea? Talk to Ted. He'd love to hear from you. Use the Magnitude Web form or send email to hello at magnitude dot io. Either way works.

Tim Lord for Slashdot: Ted, what is the Magnitude CanSat?

Ted: The Magnitude CanSat takes the primary functions of a satellite and puts it in the volume of a soda can.

Slashdot: Now explain what that payload is, what can you fit into a volume of a soda can?

Ted: So actually here's what a prototype looks like. This is the Magnitude CanSat. It has various sensors on it that measure the world around the student, barometric pressure, temperature and humidity, there's an accelerometer, GPS, there's a magnetometer and then it has breakouts for the students to add additional sensors on it such as radiation or particulate count or CO2.

Slashdot: And you call this a CanSat, at this point these are not true satelites. Is that correct?

Ted: That's correct. So these are simulated satellites. We have a pretty large vision with education, this is grounded in the new next generation science standards. There are three core areas that those standards are focused on. Disciplinary core ideas like physical science or biology. The integration of science and engineering called science and engineering practice and cross-cutting curriculum and so what's really important to us is that the students are engaged in something that’s achievable today and work toward the objective of actually doing something quite ambitious which is getting in low earth orbit and not impossible, a couple high schools around the world have actually already done it. So our goal working with a local district Manteca is what we called Manteca 2020. So in the year 2020 Manteca Unified School District in Northern California, we do everything we're supposed to do and we get the support that we need. These students, a cohort of 7th and 8th graders, who go through and begin learning with this and culminate with that experience, getting that five mile per second requirement to get into actual Earth orbit, about the same altitude as the International Space Station.

Slashdot: Can you talk about the interior of this can? What exactly is the hardware that you are streaming there?

Ted: So, it's really great. So we're basing this thing on the Arduino. Everyone is kind of familiar with Arduino. We use that as opposed to say a BeagleBone or a Raspberry because this is very easy to use, it's low cost and it's pretty ubiquitous, there are lot of libraries. And then we develop this custom shield on top and so that's really kind of the form factor. What's nice about the program because it's based on the science standards is you can actually get into design work and so this is a pre-built can, just look at this one here. We had a designer design this for us, it’s actually quite clever. There is no support material when this is actually built and so once it's off the bed, it's actually ready to be built for a can and what we want to do with the students if they actually go through a design practice, they may actually model their own kit CanSat based on the requirements of the volume of a soda can and then do their own creative use of it and whether they have used a similar design in terms of printing or not I think that's up to the student. So that's kind of an extension of the direction they could go in.

Slashdot: You know right now you're using some launch vehicles.

Ted: Oh, yeah. So, that's the fun part.

Slashdot: So let's talk about the launch vehicle, you got one right behind you?

Ted: Yeah, so

Slashdot: Tell us the story of this one?

Ted: Yeah, this is an M-class rocket. And so this guy right here with a payload of about a kilogram will take a payload up about two miles. You can't launch these anywhere, FAA gets kind of pissed if we do that. So just outside of Reno and the Black Rock Desert, a lot of you guys are familiar with Burning Man, actually not there, maybe just a couple miles north of the Burning Man, Black Rock City is where we launch. This thing will go up two miles out that way or in the Bay Area, we have to go all the way out outside of Stockton. The ceiling at Black Rock is about 150,000 feet. I think the amateur record out there is 102,000 feet. If we go out to Stockton, it's about 15,000 feet. If we get into the urban core here, we’re under a 1000 feet. These rockets are way too big. Actually this is a level three cert. So that’s the highest certification required to launch it. Most students who actually won't go through this program to build it, again if a teacher wants to branch off and start looking at physics and thinking about lift and drag, center of mass, center of pressure, they can go through this building process and build a rocket. There's something called junior high power which they can do a level one cert. That'll probably go 4,000 or 5,000 feet with a rocket like that, a little smaller.

Slashdot: So you are not limiting to launch vehicles that you provide?

Ted: That's correct. So what we typically do is work with a local rocket association, rocket club. They've been around for decades. They know what they're doing. They've got safety concerns and they can teach and educate and hopefully the programs that aren’t using rocketry will eventually adopt those programs. So, this is one type of payload vehicle. Another one I don't have on display would be your typical high altitude weather balloon. What's great about those is we can file a notice to airman in the morning and be flying the same day. We can do it right in the urban core, providing we've got the clearance and those will go up to 100,000 feet and those are beautiful.

You equip one of those with like an APRS radio, which is like Ham radio. And I could walk back into the classroom with a teacher and the students and we can literally follow the weather balloon as it's lifting up in altitude, we can measure its speed, and we can watch it going across the Earth in real-time. We send a chase team to grab that balloon and bring it back and they've got the data. So, that's kind of fun stuff.

Slashdot: How many students have so far taken part in

Ted: So, let's see. I would say to date, we've been in three states in testing mode. We've been in Oregon. We've been here in California and in Arizona. We have a little over 500 students that have been engaged and this upcoming fall, just in one district alone, we will have that equivalent. And I expect to have a couple of districts online as well. So, it's growing slowly but I think a methodical approach is probably better.

Slashdot: If people want to have such a program in their own school district, do you encourage?

Ted: Absolutely, give me a shout. Just hello at Magnitude.io and we can talk to you. If you've got a unique pedagogy you want to adapt, if you want to go more on the engineering side and whip out the soldering guns and talk about resistors, we can actually do kind of a more of a build type kit rather than a pre-assembled kit. If you want to focus more on the design aspects or what have you, if you want to get more into rocketry, it's really I think up to you as an educator. Hey – if you're a parent, you're at home teaching, let's chat. I would love to hear about your style of teaching, what your student is interested in, and we can help advise and direct.

All that stuff does not scale with a start-up and I think I'm okay with that. We're learning as much as our students are learning. And so I welcome it if you're going to call me... call me early, because I don't think I could say this in three months. So, reach out, say hello, let's talk about what you are doing. I'd love to hear if you've got a project running that's similar. I know we've got stuff happening in Europe. We've got friends in Japan that are doing this. Australia and South America, come say hello and let’s figure out what we can do together.

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