Congratulations to the LeoNUS CanSat Team who clinched 9th place (out of 83 participating teams) in their inaugural participation at the CanSat Competition!
The competition, held in Monterey, Virginia, USA on 6-9 June 2024 and organised by the American Astronautical Society, is a design-build-fly competition that provides teams with an opportunity to experience the design life-cycle of an aerospace system. It is designed to reflect a typical aerospace program on a small scale and includes all aspects of an aerospace program from the preliminary design review to post flight review. The mission and its requirements are designed to reflect various aspects of real world missions including telemetry, communications, and autonomous operations.
For the 2024 mission of the CanSat Competition, the LeoNUS team had to design a space probe that could enter a planetary atmosphere and land safely while protecting a payload (simulated by a single large hen’s egg). Aside from the payload, the CanSat also contained electronics and a detachable heat shield. Notably, the team managed to obtain full scores for the flight readiness review and launch day.