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Newbury Electronics helps UK school to win European competition

6th July 2015

Jordan Mulcare

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Newbury Electronics was delighted to hear that Team Impulse, a group of students from St Paul’s School, London had won first place in the European CanSat 2015 competition. The company first became involved with this team of young engineers when they were asked to supply prototype PCBs back in the autumn of 2014. These were then incorporated into the satellite that secured them first place in the UK competition and took them onto the final international round, held in Lisbon, Portugal.

Philip King, Managing Director, Newbury Electronics, said: "It is great to be able to encourage the next generation of engineers and to see what they are able to achieve. We look forward to hearing more about Team Impulse's ideas and projects in the future and are considering other ways of helping schools and universities with their various projects."

In the CanSat competition, teams’ 'can satellites' are launched in a rocket to an altitude of about a kilometre, before descending by a parachute. Team Impulse designed and produced a semi-autonomous rover, which was capable of measuring air temperature, pressure and humidity, while using an IR camera to produce a heat-map of the ground.

Regrettably, the IR camera broke shortly before launch and the CanSat couldn’t be demonstrated roving immediately after launch; however, the damage was repaired fast enough to give a successful live demonstration during the presentation to judges the next day. The team streamed data back to the ground from launch until the CanSat dropped below the horizon; this allowed detailed analysis. The combination of the live rover demonstration, the high quality reports and the data collected were persuasive to the judges, and Team Impulse came first in its (advanced) category.