180 students will compete in the Catalan final of the European Space Agency’s CanSat competition

• Organised by the ESEIAAT of the UPC, CanSat Catalunya has the support of the Generalitat de Catalunya in the framework of the Talent and Society axis of the NewSpace Strategy and de collaboration of the IEEC to promote space technologies and STEM vocations among young people
• The small satellites built by the teams will be launched with rockets designed by the student association Cosmic Research of the ESEIAAT-UPC on Saturday 20 of April from the Lleida-Alguaire Airport
• On April 24, the winning team that will represent Catalonia in the state final that will take place on May 16 and 17 in Murcia will be announced at the ESEIAAT headquarters in Terrassa
• The state qualifying phase in Catalonia of CanSat has broken the participation record this year, with 98 teams from 50 secondary education centres, 30 of which will take part in the lift-off day

Up to 180 students from Secondary Education, High School, and Vocational Education and Training (the so-called FP, in Spanish) from all over Catalonia, distributed in 30 teams tutored by their teachers, will participate in the Catalan qualifying phase of the CanSat competition next Saturday, 20 April, which will take place at the Lleida-Alguaire Airport in Lleida.

The event will be attended by the director of the Escola Superior d’Enginyeries Industrial, Aeroespacial i Audiovisual de Terrassa (ESEIAAT) de la Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya · BarcelonaTech (UPC), Xavier Roca; the director of the Lleida-Alguaire Airport, Antoni Serra; and the general director of Innovation, Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship of the Generalitat de Catalunya, Lluís Juncà i Pujol, and other representatives of the organising and collaborating entities.

CanSat is a competition that is promoted every year throughout Europe by the European Space Education Resource Office (ESERO) of the European Space Agency (ESA) and consists of the design, construction, and launch of small satellites, the size of a can of soda. The ESEIAAT-UPC is organising the state classification phase of this competition in Catalonia, with the support of the Secretary of Digital Policies of the Ministry of Business and Labour, within the framework of the Talent and Society axis of the NewSpace Strategy of Catalonia. The Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC — Institut d’Estudis Espacials de Catalunya), the Ministry of Education, the Lleida-Alguaire Airport, the Aeroclub Anoia, and the student association Cosmic Research also collaborate in this edition.

This year, CanSat Catalunya reaches its fourth edition consolidated as one of the country’s great scientific and technological events aimed at the youngest, with a record of participation that has exceeded all expectations: 98 teams from 50 institutes and schools from all over Catalonia registered in the contest. In the first edition, 14 teams registered; in the second, a total of 50 teams and in the third edition, last year, a total of 70 teams registered.

After the preliminary selection of the projects presented, 30 teams from 20 different centres will participate in the final launch day: 18 will launch on Cosmic Research rockets and will compete for victory, while the rest will do so by plane in a non-competitive launch. In total, almost 180 Secondary Education, High School, and Vocational Education and Training students will participate in the event, tutored by their teachers.

For an entire academic year, these promising young students shave dedicated their talent to designing and building small satellites that integrate telemetry, sensors, and data transmitters, and that are large enough to fit inside a soda can. The CanSats will be launched by rockets built by the ESEIAAT Cosmic Research student association and from aeroplanes, on April 20 at 11 a.m., 12:30 p.m. and 2 p.m. at the Lleida-Alguaire Airport (Lleida), in this event which aims to generate vocations for space, technology, and STEM disciplines among the youth.

A scientific and technological challenge

According to David González, deputy director of ESEIAAT and coordinator of CanSat in Catalonia, “the competition is both a technological and scientific challenge. In fact, it is not just a matter of launching the satellite and getting it back to Earth safe and sound. The CanSats built by the students must be able to take measurements, such as air temperature or atmospheric pressure, and carry out a scientific mission. Participants have to analyse and interpret the results obtained in a critical way. Therefore, we are talking about going further, about putting into practice the knowledge they have learnt in class”.

The finalist teams will present the results on April 24 at the ESEIAAT at 4:30 p.m., where they will have to present the conclusions to a jury. On the same day, the winning team will be chosen and proclaimed. The winning team will represent Catalonia in the CanSat state final, which will take place on May 16 and 17, in Murcia, from which the Spain representative will be chosen to participate in the European final, on June 20 and 21 in Noordwijk, Netherlands.

Links

• ESERO
• CanSat
• CanSat Catalunya 2024

Contacts

About the IEEC

The Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC — Institut d’Estudis Espacials de Catalunya) promotes and coordinates space research and technology development in Catalonia for the benefit of society. IEEC fosters collaborations both locally and worldwide and is an efficient agent of knowledge, innovation and technology transfer. As a result of more than 25 years of high-quality research, done in collaboration with major international organisations, IEEC ranks among the best international research centres, focusing on areas such as: astrophysics, cosmology, planetary science, and Earth Observation. IEEC’s engineering division develops instrumentation for ground- and space-based projects, and has extensive experience in working with private or public organisations from the aerospace and other innovation sectors.

The IEEC is a non-profit public sector foundation that was established in February 1996. It has a Board of Trustees composed of the Generalitat de Catalunya, Universitat de Barcelona (UB), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya · BarcelonaTech (UPC), and the Spanish Research Council (CSIC). The IEEC is also a CERCA centre.