Team Aphelion’s CanSat Win
Photo Credit: Team Aphelion
On May 12, a small group of Eric Hamber students — known as Team Aphelion — sent a tiny rocket 3,000 feet into the clear afternoon sky of Lethbridge, Alberta. This feat was accomplished as part of the CanSat Design Challenge, a competition in which teams of secondary school students from across Canada participate in a single engineering challenge.
Team Aphelion, named as a homage to astronomy, is led by Jason Huang (12) and consists of members Hinson Chan (12), Tristan Yan-Klassen (12), John Xu (11), and Anthony Lu (12).
The team was announced as the winner of the competition in Lethbridge, and was invited to Noordwijk in the Netherlands to visit one of the European Space Agency’s major research and development centres, known as the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC).
The task of the competition is to engineer a satellite the size of a soda can, hence the name “CanSat”. Every satellite entered in the competition must follow specific criteria, including weight. It must also be launched in a rocket and collect certain pieces of data, while pushing the bounds of practicality. “It’s all in the name of science!” Xu explained.
Teams were also tasked with choosing a specific mission for their CanSats. The mission Aphelion chose for this year’s competition was to analyze the amino acids in a collected soil sample. The sample would be collected after the CanSat launched inside of a rocket and landed safely onto the ground, drilling into the soil below.
The journey to Aphelion’s success was filled with many hurdles, from the struggle of fitting complex electronics into the small area of a soda can, to dealing with unreliable Wi-Fi during competitions. However, the team was able to overcome them all, sleeping over at a team member’s house and working on their CanSat in a Denny’s until 3:00 AM in order to have access to a stable internet connection.
Along the way, team members had to develop new skills to accomplish what was necessary for the tasks ahead of them. Chan explained that each of his teammates had to learn a unique skill according to the needs of the project, mostly concerning design aspects of the satellite. This included learning how to design printed circuit boards, 3D modelling, and 3D printing.
The team’s triumph wasn’t solely based on the success of the team’s CanSat but also their cohesiveness as a group. “It was very obvious to the judges that we've known each other a while; our teamwork was really good, and we never spoke over each other,” Chan said. The team believes that the judges awarded them the highest honour for not only their technical skills and presentation of their mission, but also their resilience as a unified group.
The team did not expect to get the win, as they faced one catastrophic mission failure: the parachute mechanism of the rocket had ripped off, causing it to fall from the sky, slamming into the ground. Despite the mission not going according to plan, they were still able to make a presentation of their CanSat with the data that they had collected which they believed helped them greatly in winning the competition.
“They were heartbroken because this was, for the grade 12s, their last project together before they had to leave,” said Xu, describing his teammates' reactions after multiple awards were announced and the team had won none of them.
“What I noticed at the judge's table was they kept on looking at us to see our reaction and were kind of smiling at us,” he continued. “Then they announced the winner and, somehow, it was us. Everyone around me got up and screamed.”
After securing first place at nationals, the team gathered at a 7-Eleven late at night for a sweet post-victory treat of ice cream alongside several other teams who also filled the store to celebrate. “It was ridiculous,” laughed Chan. “There's no reason why we did it, but there was a group of so many students just filling up the 7-Eleven buying ice cream.”