Aoyama Gakuin University
Space Club (AGU-SC)
[CanSat]
i CAN fly
[member]
Issei Yano as Project Manager
- Junior -
Sanoshi Adachi and Hidechika Yamamoto
- Sophomore -
Yuji Inagaki, Naoki Kitabayashi, Kuninori Togai, Tetsunori Hada, and Eri Yonezawa
- Adviser -
Prof. A. Koichi Hayashi
[CanSat Introduction]
We made an Open-Class (may not exceed 1050grams) CanSat, "i CAN fly." Its mission is "FlyBack" and it contains equipments to execute the mission, such as GPS and digital compass. The system uses the position and other data provided by the on-board equipments, and controls the parafoil autonomously to approach the preset target point. The flight and control log is sent to ground through the radio and recorded on the EEPROM as well.
What we struggled with the most was size and weight problem. We realized the difficulty to reflect what we think in the real structure.
[Result]
Though our CanSat was not ejected from the rocket until 240m from ground at the first flight, the whole system worked as intended and analyzing the data, we believe that it was an excellent autonomous flight. The landing point was 2250m distant from the target point.
The second flight was fairly miserable. Ejection from the rocket went well at high altitude, but a trouble of uncertain cause (probably failed to detect the ejection) occurred and the beacon was not transmitted. We lost it shortly. When we tried again to receive the signal two hours later, we found the subtle signal and succeeded to decode the coordinate. Finally, we found it three hours after the launch. It flew approximately 13km. We guess that the "ejection" switch worked as it landed and it was not controlled during the flight at all.
[Tasks]
Firstly, we have to ensure that the system starts working. We felt that as we design the system, we must pay attention especially to the procedures we must follow.
In addition, we would like to go ahead with function enhancement and set additional missions other than "FlyBack."
We could learn the difficulty and joy of making something through this project and more importantly, we learned the importance of project management. This experience should be a help to our research activities in the future. We would like to keep working so that we can get much better results with much improved CanSat next year
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