SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, May 17. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The GranSat III team, from the IES Granadilla de Abona, has won the third edition of the CanSat Canarias regional competition, held on May 10 and organized by the Program for the Promotion of Scientific Vocations and Creativity, STEAM, of the General Directorate of Planning, Innovation and Quality of the Government of the Canary Islands.
On this occasion, 19 groups of students from eight public schools in the Canary Islands participated.
GranSat III is made up of students María Angélica Rodríguez Santana, Mateo Reyes Delgado, Carlos Buján Fernández, Marcos Estévez Morales, Pablo Delgado Medina and Carlos Cano Rivero, who developed their proposal with the help of Professor Félix Jonay Mayoral Gutiérrez.
The ‘CanSat’ competition is an action of the European Space Agency (ESA) promoted nationally by ESERO Spain (European Office of Resources for Space Education in Spain) and on the islands at the initiative of the Ministry of Education, Universities, Culture and Sports.
A CanSat is the simulation of a real satellite embedded within the volume and shape of a soda can. The challenge for the students is to introduce its main subsystems, such as power supply, sensors and a communications system, in such a small space.
The CanSat is then launched to a certain height, dropped from a platform using a drone, tethered balloon, rocket, or any other method. It is then that its mission begins, which consists of the execution of a scientific experiment, achieving a harmless landing and the analysis of the data collected during the descent.
In this third edition of the regional competition, the 19 finalist teams launched their satellites at the La Atalaya football field (Santa María de Guía, Gran Canaria), in the vicinity of CEIP Juan Arencibia Sosa, using drones to do so. They rose up to 100 meters high. After the descent, the students proceeded to collect the data sent by their creations and the following day the teams presented to the jury, by videoconference, the results obtained by their CanSats.
This year, the groups HighQualSat, from IES Canarias Cabrera Pinto, have obtained other awards for their technical achievements; Helios, from the IES Támara, for its scientific value; Astras, from IES El Tablero I, for his professional skills; Órbita X, from IES Santa Ana for dissemination, and Achimencay, from IES La Orotava-Manuel González Pérez, as an honorary award.
The GranSat III team will travel as a representative of the Canary Islands to the Spain CanSat 2023 national competition, which will be held on May 18 and 19 in Granada. In turn, the winner of the national championship will represent Spain in the European CanSat Launch Campaign 2023, which will take place at the end of June.