Mission objective and Mini-Probe functions

The main objective of our CanSat mission was chosen to be testing and measuring conditions prevailing on alien planets, as we want to expand our interests related to astronomy, where the main target of space research we focused on is colonizing alien planets.

This includes making sure that a given planet is safe for landing—we will measure elements of its life conditions, such as temperature, pressure, electromagnetic field, and humidity. In order to make sure that the planet is safe not only for devices, but also for humans, we will measure more detailed parameters such as gamma radiation, UV radiation, and also light intensity (mainly for predicting the efficiency of solar panels). Additionally, we are going to make sure that our CanSat will survive dropping from a certain height, for the reason of which we will install an accelerometer, GPS, and gyroscope.

All gathered data of measured parameters should be stored on an external memory drive, in that case, a microSD card, or sent to the ground station via radio transmission.

Mini-Probe design

Overview

The Probe will be launched and deployed from a rocket at an altitude of about 2000 meters, and its velocity of descent will not exceed above 8 meters per second. While in descent and after landing, our Probe will continuously measure all parameters listed above.

Mechanical design

All modules and systems that the Probe will consist of are:

• Sensors Module: such as thermometer (DHT11), humidity meter (DHT11), barometer (IMU 10DoF), magnetometer (IMU 10DoF), GPS (MTK3339), Geiger’s Counter (GC-1602-NANO) and spectrophotometer (AS7265x). To determine if an alien planet is a safe area to create a colony, gamma radiation, UV radiation and electromagnetic field will be measured. Additionally, light intensity will be checked to indicate if the future colony’s solar panels are going to be effective. Every other measurement of the secondary mission will be used to define the actual position and the status of our Probe, indicating the planned proceeding of the mission.
• The Case: 3D-printed using PETG filament type, its weight slightly above 300 g. The openable part of the Case will probably be located on the bottom of the CanSat for easy access to the battery and hardware. For the spectrophotometer to work, we will make a circular hole in one side of the satellite’s case. On its outer surface, we will also install LED control lights and an on/off switch. Most of our satellite’s modules we are going to install vertically, the heaviest elements such as a battery on the bottom of the case.
• Main Controller: Arduino Nano RP2040 operates as the main controller and the motherboard of our satellite. It contains a Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller. Every module used in the primary and secondary mission will be connected to it, and the controller will be responsible for data transmission between the Mini-Probe and the ground station, as well, via the Radio Module.
• Data-save Module: a microSD card reader will be installed on the outer surface of the Case.
• Communication System (Radio Module): one directional (only from our CanSat to the ground station), with radio frequency of 433 MHz. We will use the LoRa-02 module as a transceiver, with a regular 33×4.9 mm copper antenna in the satellite, and COMA ATK-10 antenna connected to the ground station.
• Power Supply Module: supplied using a Li-Ion battery, with the capacity 3350 mAh. According to the readings of power consumption during the work of every module, our CanSat satellite should operate for about 7.5 hours, with average consumption—about 10 hours. 
• Recovery System with GPS Module: a parachute will be the spine of the Recovery System of our CanSat. The main purpose of using it is to slow down the CanSat descent to 8 m/s. The parachute will be dome-shaped and made of nylon, with bright red materials used, in order to localize CanSat later on. In the localization process, a GPS is needed. A signal from the GPS module will be sent continuously until the satellite is found and turned off.

Software design

The job of the software for our Mini-Probe will be to calculate proper values using measured data acquired from the primary and secondary mission modules, and sending them to the ground station. It should manage the communication system to prioritize sending certain important information such as localization and velocity first, and postpone the rest; for example, all data acquired from the GPS module is valuable for us in order to monitor the current status of our CanSat. The second significant function of the program the satellite’s equipped with will be saving the measured data directly on the external drive during the measurement process. Most of the collected data will be transferred to the ground station, but to ensure none of it is lost, a copy of each measurement result will be stored.

Said software will be written in Arduino C, in the Arduino IDE development environment.

Ground support station

Our ground station will contain one computer connected to the radio management module from which the data received via radio transmission from the Mini-Probe will be sent to the computer. The ground station software will display every received measurement result in the application using several charts. Our CanSat 3D model will indicate all information about the satellite position and its status. In the same way the data will be displayed in a mobile app, available to download for all. The data used by the mobile app will be delivered via the Internet FTP server by the ground station computer. The ground station software will be mainly written in C# programming language, except for the radio management module written in Arduino C.

Gallery: design and renders

TBA