Moate TYs attend CANSAT Workshop in the AIT

The Moate Community School CANSAT team headed in to the Engineering Department in the AIT for their second workshop on Monday 4th Feb. The team consists of Melanie Arnold, Darragh Counihan, Luke Smyth and Irene Murphy.

The CanSat competition is a unique education project run by the European Space Education Resource Office (ESERO) Ireland in association with CIT Blackrock Castle Observatory. For the project, teams of students are tasked with building, designing and launching a mini satellite with sensors that is small enough to fit inside of a soft drinks can.

At the workshop, Kevin McDermot (AIT) discussed the teams progress to date. He was very impressed with the work they have done on their Primary mission which is to measure temperature and atmospheric pressure in a number of conditions and report their results. Paul Mulvey (AIT) made some suggestions on improvements to their parachute design. He also helped them with communication between their Arduino computer and their software programs on the laptop.

The students also explored their options for outreach. A very important part of the CANSAT project is to inform others about their project and encourage other students of the interesting areas of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) subjects.

Overall it was a most enjoyable morning for the Moate students. They learned a lot about the technology involved. They realised that they still have a lot of work to do to prepare for the Regional Final in March. Many thanks to Ms Margaret Mandal who co-ordinates the CANSAT project in MCS and to Kevin McDermot and Paul Mulvey in the AIT for all their support with the workshop and the organisation of the CANSAT project.

Cansat workshop photo: Irene Murphy, Melanie Arnold, Luke Smyth, Paul Mulvey AIT, Darragh Counihan, Kevin McDermot AIT