The project of the Sapienza Space Team is based on a simulation on a smaller scale of a space mission in which the main phases are “ascent” and “atmospheric reentry”. Mainly, it consists in designing a prototype which should comply with requirements of a mission promoted by AIAA, NASA (and other leading the aerospace field). The name of the mission is “CanSat Competition” indeed, an international annual competition between universities. The prototype is a satellite of contained dimensions [310x125 mm], which originates from the concept of CanSats (small-sized satellites stowed in a cylindrical container similarly to a can, from which the word “CanSat”).
The prototypes are thought and built to comply with the official requirements. They change every year, but fundamentally the dynamics of launch are the same: the CanSat is brought to the altitude of approximately 1 kilometer in less then 5 seconds. In the mission dynamics upon which the CanSat is designed, it is released from the rocket, thus starting its controlled descent. At a fixed altitude separation between carrier and lander (or between internal payload and external container) occurs, through operations and systems which vary year by year accordingly to the parameters of the mission. Throughout the whole mission, several sensors and a camera are installed inside the CanSat, so that it can gather data (speed, altitude, acceleration, temperature, pressure, pictures, videos etc..).
The mission consist of 3 steps: Designing, Presentation, Mission. The latter takes place in June in Texas (USA) among the 40 teams that have accumulated the highest score in the previous phases