National CanSat Winners!!!!

After a long, hard journey, some might think it was time for it to come to an end, but we had other plans! After a quick swim in the morning (for some of us) and an early breakfast, we set off for Birr Castle. We were immediately brought to weigh our can and subsequently, a test drop was carried out to ensure everyone obtained some data. This all went well up until the official launch, when we lost connection to our CanSat before the rocket even took off.

Thankfully, we had thought of everything and had also built what came to be known as the "pooper scooper" (aka parabolic reflector), which directed the electromagnetic radio frequency waves to the antenna located at the focal point. The connection kept dropping and we were receiving inconsistent data. We lost connection about 45 seconds prior to launch and we thought it was going to be a disaster, but we were back receiving data 10 seconds before take-off, and it stayed that way.

As our CanSat came down, all we could see was what looked like a flag flapping about following the can to the ground, which we soon after realised was caused by three of the parachute's strings separating from it, yet it still descended at the same rate as the other CanSats. One of the requirements for the parachute was that it had to withstand a force of 20g, so we had to prove we had a parachute capable of that. The solution to this was to send the can back up in the second launch with our spare parachute. The replacement parachute worked perfectly, but we still had problems. A gust of wind took all of the CanSats and sent them in the direction of a house, but once again, luck was on our side and unlike several of the other teams, we were able to retrieve our can. Everyone went back to the main centre to prepare for presentations, where Alex and Gergely worked on getting our data into the powerpoints.

As the time to present approached, we sat anxiously waiting for the first team to finish their display, realising if the standard was similar or above to the aforementioned first team, we knew it'd be difficult to win. But the time came, and we all stood up with butterflies in our stomachs (at least me anyway) and got ready to present. We started strongly, and everything went well, all of the questions being answered near enough perfectly. The judges seemed impressed with our 'pooper scooper' and grilled us about the concept behind it. After that we went outside in the pouring rain to have our picture taken with the rocket used in the launch.

We waited patiently for the other teams to start and finish their presentations and doing this we realised we had some tough competition. The time finally came that all of the other teams had presented and the judges would go off to discuss what they had just seen. During this short interval, the infomercial made near the start of our campaign was played and viewed by the other teams. After what felt like an hour, but was probably closer to 15 minutes, the judges came back to announce the winners. The few moments before the announcement were some of the most nerve-racking of my life. Finally, the words came out of the judges mouth and we were crowned National CanSat Champions!!! We will be heading to Portugal in June to compete in the European CanSat competition.