St Josephs Borrisoleigh Students through to National Finals

Tipperary Team Through to National Finals of the the European CanSat Competition!

By Aaron Reid, Jack Cullen, John Ryan and Nicky Cooney students at St. Josephs College, Borrisoleigh

CanSat is an international competition thought up by the European Space Agency to promote science education among second level students. A CanSat is basically when we design, build and code a satellite that fits inside the size of a soft drinks can! When the satellite is launched, it needs to take readings from our sensors and we have the results live streamed to our website.

Results coming through! (Medium)

The Irish ESERO, headed by Stephanie O’Neill, are responsible for the Irish leg of the competition. LIT’s Marie Walsh acts as a regional host and sponsor of the competition. We also had a mentor from LIT, Ian who was on hand to answer any of our questions. We also got to meet a lovely judge from Vistakon in Nenagh called Hugh who made the day enjoyable also.

On Friday, 4th of March 2016, our CanSat team – Copernicus IV, won the regional’s! We are now through to the nationals in Birr Castle in April.

Winners! (Medium)

After all the hard work and late nights, we were excited for launch day in LIT. We had a very early start after a late night adding the final touches to our project! The most anxious part was waiting to see if our satellite would transmit results once it was taking off in the quad-copter. That was probably the most exciting part of the day. After that, we were confident we could do well once we got the correct data from our CanSat. We had practiced our presentation so we could deliver it and present ourselves well. We were all in shock when they called out our name as the winners. Now it is time to go back to the drawing board again to improve our design! – Aaron Reid

As part of the team I feel accomplished and delighted that our team gets to compete again in Birr Observatory for the nationals. Friday was an excellent day in my opinion. We went in as one of the smallest teams. We had developed our satellite with the lowest budget approx 40euro and our CanSat was the lightest at the competition. We competed well and I believe our win is much deserved. I feel accomplished because after a couple of months of hard work and challenges it finally paid off! – Jack Cullen

Our CanSat loaded to the quad-copter (Medium)

We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has helped us along our journey. Both our school and local community have been so supportive in everything and have shown us great interest. In our outreach programme, Paddy Ryan of tipperarytimes.com has also been very helpful!

Aaron Reid, Jack Cullen, John Ryan and Nicky Cooney, St. Joseph’s College, Borrisoleigh.

 


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