Team from Kapi'Olani Community College Honolulu Hawaii, Wins Student CanSat Competition Written 27 June 2013
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: DUANE HYLAND
(AIAA Communications 2008–2017)
703.264.7558
duaneh@aiaa.org
International Competition Drew 175 Students From Nine Nations, Including Iran
June 27, 2013 – Reston, Va. – A team from Kapi‘olani Community College, Honolulu, Hawaii, has won the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA)/American Astronautical Society (AAS) CanSat Competition, held June 7–9 in Abilene, Texas. A “CanSat” is a rocket payload roughly the size of a soda can, used to teach miniaturized satellite technology.
A team representing Amirkabir University, Tehran, Iran, placed second in the competition, and a team representing Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada, placed third. Teams from Colombia, Guatemala, India, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom were also among the 22 teams participating. For a full list of results from the competition, please visit www.cansatcompetition.com/2013_Winners.html
“The AIAA/AAS CanSat competition is a wonderful opportunity for college students seeking to become aerospace professionals to develop the creative, innovative, and sound technical skills that they will need to rely on,” said Sandy Magnus, AIAA executive director. “In addition to being a great learning experience, competitions such as CanSat are great fun! The international nature of the event illustrates that enthusiasm and passion for space exploration is worldwide. Our love of things flying, whether in the air or in space, binds us all together and the students at CanSat connect into this wider community.”
“This has truly become an international event,” stated AAS executive director Jim Kirkpatrick. “It’s heartening to see 175 students from nine countries working side-by-side on a ranch in Texas to meet a common mission objective. For all the things a space-related STEM event should be, it just doesn’t get any better than this!”
The AIAA/ASS CanSat competition required teams to build and launch an autonomous CanSat payload via rocket to an altitude of 700 meters. Each CanSat was required to carry one large, raw hen’s egg intact from launch to landing, and transmit GPS position and telemetry in real time to a ground station. Each team was also required to write a mission proposal, to conduct preliminary and critical design reviews with staff engineers, and to prepare and present a post-mission debrief. The competition allows students to experience, on a small scale, the process followed by a typical aerospace program.
Additional sponsors of the CanSat competition were NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Naval Research Laboratory, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Kratos, Praxis, and the AIAA Space Operations and Support Technical Committee.
For more information on the AIAA/AAS CanSat Competition, please visit www.CanSatcompetition.com/main.
MEDIA CONTACT: Duane Hyland, 703.264.7558, of duaneh@aiaa.org
AIAA is the world’s largest technical society dedicated to the global aerospace profession. With more than 35,000 individual members worldwide, and100 corporate members, AIAA brings together industry, academia, and government to advance engineering and science in aviation, space, and defense. For more information, visit www.aiaa.org, or follow us on Twitter @AIAA.