UCI CanSat

Background

The CanSat is a science payload enclosed in a container. It is launched to an altitude of 700 meters and must land safely while sending telemetry during descent. Initially, after separation from the rocket, the payload and container descend under a parachute. At 500 meters, the first payload will be released. At 400 meters, the second payload will release, while the container continues under the parachute. This year, the science payloads are auto-rotating maple seeds that must descend at a rate of less than 20 m/s. During all portions of the mission, the payloads and container will record environmental data from onboard sensors and stream it in real time to a ground station computer.

Goals and Objectives

In addition to meeting our competition objectives, our team's goals are to provide all members with hands-on experience in engineering design. Although this goal has been more challenging to reach this year due to being remote, our team has done well with adapting to the ever changing situation. Over the three quarters of the 2020-2021 academic year, we went from brainstorming, to concept generation, to building and launching our flight hardware at the virtual CanSat competition live demonstration. We are a small team where every member has a critical part to play during the life-cycle of this aerospace system.

Details on progress

By the end of finals week, the team will complete this year's objective of making maple seed based probes. This entails completing the designs, manufacturing, and testing of all of our systems as well as completing the electronics and software to make the cansat function as per competition requirements. Over this year, the team completed their preliminary design presentation, critical design presentation, environmental test documentation, and live demonstration for judges which will be used to decide the team's placing.

Upcoming plans

UCI CanSat will continue into the 2021-2022 school year where some members are currently being trained and some will continue. They will carry our legacy and compete in the CanSat competition to complete a new task that will be announced in the August-September 2021.

History

UCI CanSat was founded in 2017 and was the first team to represent UCI in the international CanSat Competition at Tarleton University. Historically UCI CanSat has placed very well and continues to do so. Below is a list of each year's placement. 

2017-2018: 

Preliminary Design Review Phase: 1/100

Critical Design Review Phase: 1/40

Overall: ?/20

2019-2020: 

Preliminary Design Review Phase: 2/100

Overall: 11/40

2020-2021: 

Preliminary Design Review Phase: 9/100

Critical Design Review Phase: 9/42

Overall: To be determined

Sponsorship & Donations

UCI CanSat is always open to making sponsorship and donation connections to fund the construction of our project. If you are interested in sponsoring or donating to our UCI CanSat team, please contact us at cansatuci@gmail.com. 

How to Join UCI CanSat

We are currently looking for sophomore or junior Mechanical or Aerospace engineers who may continue to work on the team next year as well. UCI students can contact cansatuci@gmail.com for information with a statement of interest and your resume..

Team Website: Please follow this link to our team website! 

Team Contacts

UCI CanSat team, cansatuci@gmail.com

Advisor

Professor Roger Rangel, rhrangel@uci.edu