CanSat is an educational project that seeks to teach STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) disciplines using space as their context. The challenge is simple: can you build a satellite that fits into a soft drink can?
A CanSat contains all the major subsystems of a real satellite, such as power and communications. The only difference is that it will not go into orbit. It will be launched on a drone or a rocket that will travel up to an altitude of 400m — 1 km, deploy its parachute, and land safely. The CanSats must perform a primary mission, which consists of transmitting data of temperature and pressure measurements, and a secondary mission, which is up to your imagination.
The participating teams will be involved in a real scientific project. They will have to design a CanSat prototype, test it, perform a mission, and gather and analyse the data. The major challenge is to keep the CanSat within the specified limits in time, size and expenses.
In Norway, this educational project fits particularly well in the subject «Teknologi og forskningslære».
The CanSat book
The CanSat book is built up so that you can start from scratch and get a feeling of mastering the kit as you read through the book. In the beginning, we will describe how you can get your Arduino board and shield up and running. Then we will turn over for the missions. In this book, we have described a primary mission and how you will get data from it. In some competitions, you have a standard primary mission that the same for everyone. Secondary mission will be an optional mission that your team is creating.
CanSat Competition
Each year there is a national CanSat competition. Each team must consists of four students full-time enrolled in a secondary school and in addition a teacher, which will follow the team to Andøya Space for the competition. One teacher can be responsible for one team per year only. During the competition at Andøya Space, the CanSats will be launched by a rocket, a drone or a balloon.
The winning team of the national competitions will be granted a place in the European CanSat competition arranged by the European Space Agency.
It is important, that each team submitting a project proposal is sure that both the students and teacher are able to participate in the European CanSat Competition in June in case they will be a national winner in the National Competition.
Who will be the winner of the CanSat Competition at Andøya?
The winner of the CanSat Competition at Andøya will be the team with the highest total score for the items to be evaluated by the jury. In the table below, the different items are described and further description can be found here.
| Technical achievement 35% | How the teams obtained the results, how reliable and robust the CanSat was, and how the CanSat performed. Innovative aspects of the project will be judged (e.g. the tools selected and the hardware/software used). |
| Scientific Value 35% | The scientific value of the teams’ missions and the teams’ scientific skills will be evaluated. This includes the scientific relevance of the mission, the quality of the technical reporting (both written and oral) and the team’s scientific understanding that will be assessed from the team’s ability to analyse and interpret results appropriately. |
| Professional Competencies 20% | The Jury will assess the team’s collaboration and coordination, adaptability and communication skills. |
| Outreach 10% | The team will be awarded points on how the project is communicated to the school and the local community, taking into account web pages, blogs, presentations, promotional material, media coverage etc. |
Teams’ final scores will be penalised with 1% per day of late submission of the CanSat Pre-launch Report. Similarly, 1% of the final score will be subtracted per 10 euros extra spent over the maximum CanSat budget of 500 euros.
Registration for the CanSat Competition:
- Make sure that your team fulfils the requirements for participating in the competition. Read below.
- Read carefully the guidelines for the CanSat Competition which follows the European CanSat guidelines (you find it here: guidelines)
- Fill in all information in the registration form that you will find below at this page.
- Send and register your projec using the form below.
Who can register?
To be able to participate in the CanSat competition, the following must be met by the team:
- A team consists of four members aged 14 – 20 years.
- Each team needs to be supervised by a teacher responsible for monitoring the team’s technical progress, offering help and advice, and acting as the team’s point of contact with NAROM. The Team Leader must be available to accompany the team to the competition launch campaign at Andøya space.
- The teacher needs to have participated on CanSat teacher training. If not the case, contact NAROM (contact info below).
- The students are enrolled full-time in a secondary school.
- Both the students and teacher are able to participate in the European CanSat Competition in June in case they will be a national winner in the CanSat Competition at Andøya.
- It is forbidden for a team to participate in the CanSat competition more than once except for the teacher and up to one student from the former team.
- For more information of the competition and requirements, see: Guidelines for the national CanSat competition