Defying gravity with a satellite the size of a can, this is the ‘Aurora Mission’ of an institute in Santa Marta

They are not engineers, but they have been able to design a small functional satellite that collects environmental data, takes photographs and has a communication system, and all this in a mini format, the size of a soda can.

They are Alba, Mara, Alessia, Óscar, Jimena and Iván, ESO and Baccalaureate students from the Torrente Ballester Institute in Santa Marta de Tormes who, together with their teachers Luz María Rodríguez and Carlos Sánchez, have designed what they have called “Aurora Mission” and created their microsatellite from scratch within the educational innovation project CanSat, “Can” (can) and “Sat” (satellite), organized by the European Space Agency. An initiative that includes the design, construction and launch, which the students of the IES de Santa Marta will carry out this Tuesday at the Herrera de Pisuerga airfield.

A project that involves schoolchildren being able to build a functional satellite, which is launched with a rocket at a height of one thousand meters and which must be able to collect reliable data during the descent and in real conditions such as altitude, sound, movement, etc. in addition to detecting the launch phases: ascent, apogee, descent and landing. Furthermore, the project is a competition between Institutes in which the most solid project, the one that responds best and is most complete, is classified for the next round. If on Tuesday they advance to the national phase, there they will compete with many other centers in Spain and from there, to the European phase.

All this with the added difficulty of size. All systems, boards and components must work and must be able to fit into a can. And work. Throughout the year the six members of the team have been designing and testing its operation. In fact, at first they used cables to work in the square, but later they integrated everything into the motherboard, gaining space and being able to add components and sensors.

As for the structure, let’s remember the size of a can, they made a design taking into account that it had to withstand the descent and landing, since it descends a thousand meters with a small parachute. After 3D printing it and doing various resistance tests, they turned to another institute in Salamanca that printed the cases with more resistant material.

Thus, motherboards, sensors, a communication system that allows the software to read the measurements and parachutes, sewn by the mother of one of the students, form this small piece of engineering to which the students and teachers have dedicated a good part of their free time this year. “They give us the measurements and the objective of the design is that everything fits inside because it is a very small space, they give us the measurements, the maximum weight, everything,” the students say.

A project in which the entire center participates, although they are the visible face and who will be in charge of launching their satellite this Tuesday. In fact, the different departments of the center have collaborated, while the students who participate have collected ideas from their classmates. Thus, in different classrooms, work has been done with artificial intelligence, electronics, radio, project designs, budget preparation,… It has become a center project that also includes the entire process of a real project, including searching for sponsors, having a budget or defending the results obtained in the mission.

This Tuesday will be the big day, when your satellite will be launched on a rocket with those from other participating centers. The test launch, as a general rehearsal before the big day, was at the Matacán Air Base, which also collaborates with the initiative. A test that was a complete success and that makes the six students and their teachers have very high expectations for this Tuesday. Your space mission is about to take off, good flight.