UAH teams excel in 2024 international CanSat competition

Russ Nelson, UAH research writer | Jul 01, 20240

Courtesy UAH Space Hardware Club count

Team Moonracer conducting their Flight Readiness Review.

Courtesy UAH Space Hardware Club count

Team Shockwave demonstrates their ground station to a competition judge.

Courtesy UAH Space Hardware Club count

Team Snapdragon preparing their CanSat for flight at the launch site.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (JUL 23, 2024) – Three Space Hardware Club (SHC) teams from The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a part of the University of Alabama System, have placed first, third and fourth nationally in the 2024 International CanSat competition. UAH student teams Shockwave, Snapdragon and Moonracer placed first, third and fourth nationally, while also notching second, seventh and 10th, respectively, in the final international rankings.

The accomplishment is even more impressive considering that a majority of the UAH team members were new to the competition, says SHC AutoSat program manager and project lead, Louis McEvoy. Among the 27 competing team members, 85% were first-year freshmen whose only prior knowledge was a SHC two-month training program they participated in at the start of the year. "They're competing against primarily upperclassmen and graduates from other countries, and knowing that we fell short of first place internationally by a margin of only 0.3%, we're pretty proud of that," McEvoy says.

A CanSat is a type of rocket payload used to teach students space technology. The 2024 mission simulates a space probe entering a planetary atmosphere. Each CanSat contains electronics, a hen's egg that simulates a delicate instrument, and a detachable heat shield, as well as sensors for tracking altitude, internal temperature, battery voltage and GPS position. The egg must survive without breaking through all phases of flight. CanSats are launched to a maximum altitude of 725 meters, measuring the speed of the rocket during ascent and of the CanSat itself during descent. At an altitude of 100 meters, the CanSat releases the aero-braking heat shield and simultaneously deploys a parachute to reduce the descent rate to less than 5 meters/sec.

The competition was held over four days in Staunton, Va., with each team attending a preflight briefing, putting their hardware through a Flight Readiness Review, and flying their projects at the competition's launch site. The annual event is open to teams from universities and colleges and is organized by the American Astronautical Society (AAS) to support a student design-build-launch competition for space-related topics, as seen in this video. Students participate in a hands-on end-to-end life cycle of a complex engineering project, from conceptual design, through integration and test, concluding with the actual operation of the system and post-mission summary and debrief.

"Our CanSat teams each scored over 98% of the possible points to be earned in highly technical design reviews presented to the competition judges," McEvoy notes. "Throughout the competition, the UAH teams worked their butts off. And each of these teams could not do what they are doing without the support of their university."

The Space Hardware Club is the largest student group on the UAH campus, comprising nearly 300 students. The SHC AutoSat program is a subset of the group that deals primarily with autonomous payloads and vehicles.

CanSat Team Moonracer

Sofia Vicente (Team Lead) - Mechanical Engineering

Colin Reiland - Electrical Engineering

Kaiden Skiles - Aerospace Engineering

Collin Caple - Cybersecurity Engineering

Jack Westbrook - Aerospace Engineering

Joshua Kiss - Mechanical Engineering

Edward Narramore - Aerospace Engineering

Amanda Shaw - Aerospace Engineering

Phineas Masters - Aerospace Engineering

Ethan Pascuales - Computer Science

CanSat Team Shockwave