Design and development of a CanSat for high altitude missions with "Comeback" capability

• Main Author: Chan, Alvin Bai Xian
• Other Authors: Low Kay Soon
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/63819
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The concept of building CanSats (a common abbreviation for satellite in a can) was first proposed by Professor Robert Twiggs of Stanford University back in the year 1999. As CanSats are non-orbital in nature, they are normally released from various altitude levels within the Earth's atmosphere based on mission requirement. Throughout the duration of the flight by the CanSats back to the ground, a multitude of missions can be carried out as determined by the users. Some of these missions include the measurement of environmental variables and data collection, image capturing at altitude, etc. In this project, the main focus is on the development of a CanSat to be released at an altitude which is higher than 20km. In addition, the CanSat will also have to be incorporated with a "comeback" capability such that it can navigate autonomously back to a pre-determined landing point as close as possible. The CanSat will also be able to perform environmental data measurements and gathering of telemetry data through the on-board integrated sensor module throughout the entire duration of the mission. Memory cards were largely used as the data storage medium when CanSats were first developed due to their relatively light weight and small size. Data gathered by the various sensor modules would be stored in the memory card for further analysis upon recovery and retrieval of the CanSat. For high altitude missions, the flight duration is comparatively longer than lower altitude missions. In addition, the presence of unforeseen environmental factors like wind direction and speed may inadvertently cause the CanSat to land quite a distance (in terms of kilometres) away from the releasing point. Thus, CanSats were developed with the capability to wirelessly transmit telemetry data back to the ground station in real-time for redundancy and also allowed for location tracking via GPS (Global Positioning System) coordinates. Both of these capabilities will also be incorporated in the development of the CanSat.