Team Eclipse's Blog

Final stages

cansateclipse — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 10:53:38 +0000

In the last few weeks before the CanSat is launched in Norway, the last problems are being fixed and the final tests, performed. Some initial issues with the GPS transmission have been identified and solved, and the CanSat will soon be fully ready for flight.

Three members of the team went to the Farnborough Air Show on Friday 23rd, where they met, amongst many others, representatives of the ESA and were given a brief tour of the Space Zone of the Air Show.

Having regained several of our team members from a physics trip to America, Team Eclipse’s CanSat is now nearing completion. These latest developments put team Eclipse in the last stages of the CanSat’s production.

Progress – April 2010

cansateclipse — Sat, 01 May 2010 16:47:47 +0000

Our CanSat is nearing the final phases of development, maufacture and testing. The Fabrication team has built a prototype body in time for our test of the parachute, produced by the Research and Design team, which took place this week. The Electronics and Programming team are making their share of the progress, and will be finishing the implementation of our GPS module by the weekend.

The latter has recently resolved a problem due to our having five analogue inputs. The CanSat microcontroller board has, by default, only three ADC connections. Several candidate solutions to this problem were considered including controller subsystems (sampling), multiplexing and purchasing additional ADCs. However it was eventually discovered that the microcontroller in fact has eight ADCs, five of which had not been soldered to connectors, and we are back on track.

This latest progress puts us well on course to finish our CanSat comfortably on schedule.

Our first three weeks

cansateclipse — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 22:58:27 +0000

So far, so good; we’ve finished work on the parachute have all our sensors calibrated and tested and the primary mission is fully programmed. The Electronics and Programming team has been working overtime to get everything working with great success, and the parachute has been researched and made in double time too. With just a little more time, we can have the GPS module up and running, and the body work and testing is well under way.

Now to get going on our secondary mission before Easter arrives. The entire team are off to the UK National Space Conference next week. Hopefully we can keep up the rate of progress for the coming weeks.

Press Release: St Paul’s team to represent UK in European Space Agency competition

Bryant Tan — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 17:40:08 +0000

Team Eclipse, a team consisting of 10 sixth form pupils from St Paul’s School, Barnes, London, has been selected to represent the UK in a European space competition, the 2010 ESA CanSat competition. The team will compete against 11 other teams from European nations in a contest to launch successfully a scientiﬁc instrument from the Andøya Rocket Range in the Arctic Circle this August. Team Eclipse will have to design and manufacture a device the size and weight of a coke can which can measure temperature and pressure, and carry out advanced telemetry experiments during its descent from 1km above the Earth’s surface. The St Paul’s team includes three pupils who were ﬁnalists in the UK National School’s Aerospace Challenge last year. Team Leader Matthew Willetts said “This is a great opportunity to apply what we have been studying in science. We are so proud to be representing our country, because one of our strengths is in space technology”. The team will be sharing their progress throughout the project on a blog at http://teameclipse.wordpress.com/, a Youtube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/teameclipsecansat, Twitter at http://twitter.com/cansat_eclipse, and Facebook at http://tiny.cc/wsLhR.

Meet the team

cansateclipse — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 22:33:42 +0000

We are a team of 10 students at St. Paul’s School, London. Our group leaders were in a team (yes, it was also called Team Eclipse) at the 2009 UK National Aerospace finals. Sadly we didn’t win, but we were in the last 10 teams out of an initial 400. When we saw the ESA CanSat competition we thought it was a great opportunity to recall the team, add some more people, and take on Europe.

Our Group Leader for Fabrication (hopefully not financial) and Materials, Alex Turdean, is an engineer par excellence. He is responsible for the devices we make not falling apart – a very important job. At the same time Alex will be doing his best to follow his second love, dance. No jokes please. Given the importance of his role, and the fact that many, many man hours will be spent building our craft if we get through to the next stage, Alex commands the largest group of team mates.

Alex rocking out

For Electronics and Programming we have Bryant Tan as our Group Leader. Bryant, or Bry, or BT or simply B, depending how well you know him, has been coding since he was twelve, and has got better with time like a fine stilton. Without Bryant there is no coding, and with no coding all we have is a very expensive and perfectly weighted drinks can – perhaps it would make a good paperweight. Bryant’s posse includes a guy, Sean, who, and don’t mention this to Bryant, beat him by 1 mark in the British Informatics Olympiad. Bryant is not often beat, but when it does happen the cosmic order is upset. Continents collide, the seas boil, and tornadoes strike downtown Manhattan.

Oh yeah, and Bryant can fly planes

Our team leader and Group Leader of Research and Development, Matthew Willetts, has loved physics and served as a constant inspiration to his peer scientists since primary school, and is consequently charged with the non-trivial task of whipping the team into shape while thinking very hard. Helping him achieve the latter are is apparently boundless knowledge, and a hand-picked crew of some of the brightest physicists from the year below.

He can be quite English too

More on the rest of the team as time progresses.

The Team:

Matthew Willetts – Team Leader, Group leader of Research & Development

Alexander Turdean – Group Leader of Fabrication & Materials

Bryant Tan – Group leader of Electronics & Programming

Jacob Ader – Research & Development

Cameron Lemon – Research & Development

Edward Scallan – Fabrication & Materials

John Beckett – Fabrication & Materials

Tim Palmer – Fabrication & Materials

Sean Quah – Electronics & Programming

Mihir Bhushan – Electronics & Programming

The Beginning

cansateclipse — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:15:29 +0000

Well, this is it. The first post of the Team Eclipse blog. We are a London based team aiming to compete in the European Space Agency CanSat competition. Stay tuned for more as things unfold.

We have lots to do. First of all is getting a few ideas down on paper and, hopefully, getting some money. We hope to be able to keep you abreast of developments as they occur.

Team Eclipse