Team Aero, consisting of seven electronic engineering students will represent NewVIc at the annual CanSat Competition in Cambridge.  

A group of second-year electronic engineering students have embarked on a challenge to design and launch a satellite designed to fit in a standard-sized can and will represent NewVIc at the annual CanSat competition with The European Space Agency (ESA).  They will go head to head with other teams at the national competitions taking place in Cambridge for UK contestants, more than 1000 students will participate in this from all over Europe. After national competitions, the next step is a place in the European launch campaign in June 2020. This year is the 10th edition of the European CanSat Competition. 

The European CanSat Competition is an ESA Education project that promotes STEM literacy amongst young European students through project-based learning. A CanSat is a simulation of a real satellite, integrated within the volume and shape of a soft drink can. Team Aero’s challenge is to fit all the major subsystems of a satellite inside this minimal volume, launched by a small rocket up to an altitude of 1 km. As the CanSat descends, its mission begins. 

NewVIc team members consist of Vlad Toca, Adonis Deda, Abdul Basit, Hamzah Khan, Maisha Samiha, Harinder Singh Spall and Muhammed Amin Hussain. They are designing a satellite with a primary mission of measuring temperature and pressure during its 1km descent. They have also selected their own secondary mission which is to measure atmospheric pollutants and use this data to determine the local air quality. 

Project Manager Hamzah Khan said:

This is the first big competitive game we’ve been involved in so far. We started on this project back in October and its going good so far. We haven’t done something like this before so there have been things that have been challenging like learning about coding but we’ve overcome 99% of our obstacles and the rest is on schedule. Our communications engineers Maisha and Vlad are on top of everything. We’re learning lots on this project, researching to understand tasks involved and get the project complete for the national competition, we can’t wait!

Hamzah Khan
Year 2 Electronic Engineering student 

NewVIc is already a very successful college with a 4-year success rate of 95% (15% higher than the national average) in engineering. NewVIc engineering students make better progress than 99% of students on this course nationwide with excellent employer links with a broad range of engineering companies. 

Barbara Walsh, Programme Team Manager for Construction and Engineering, said:

We are so pleased with the progress of team Aero on this project, the students are all working together and are on schedule for the national competition later this month. This is the first time NewVIc students have got involved in something like this. We’re all looking forward to seeing how well the group do at the nationals, they deserve to get to European launch in June!