The project from Escola Secundária Dom Manuel Martins involves creating a can satellite (cansat) that captures videos and photos during its descent to gather data about new planets. Utilizing a Raspberry Pi Zero W for enhanced processing, the cansat integrates various technologies including a GPS module and an IMU for temperature and pressure data, with a recovery system featuring three parachutes. A portable ground station based on a Raspberry Pi 3 will receive the data, with a focus on image capture only during the fall to manage memory usage.

1. HORIZON TEAM
Escola Secundária Dom Manuel Martins, Setúbal
Project summary
Our project consists of obtaining videos and
quality photos throughout the fall of cansat. We
relied on the fact that imaging is very important
to understand a new planet, not only in terms of
its topology, but also to detect life or physical
phenomena on the surface of that planet. It
seems to us that obtaining images during the fall
of a satellite can be especially important if the
atmosphere of this planet is dense and does not
allow good images from satellites that orbit it.
In addition to ensuring that the camera works,
we must be concerned about stabilizing the
satellite along the descent. In this sense, our
goal is to make a recovery system with 3
parachutes, similar to that used in the Orion
module.
Because quality video capture requires more
processing power than an arduino processor
and the use of more powerful libraries, we have
chosen to base the design of our cansat on a
raspberry pi zero W.
In addition to this main goal, our cansat have a
GPS module to track the location of the satellite
and get information about the location of the fall.
The primary mission will be fulfilled with an IMU
that integrates a BMP180 to acquire the
temperature and pressure. This data will be sent
through an RFM69 and collected in a
groundstation that integrates a Yagi antenna
built by the team.
To avoid creating too large video files, the
camera will only be activated during the fall.
Design overview
A little more information ...
Programming Electronics 3D design
Procedure
Special thanks
Parachute design Antenna design Testing
Our cansat
“heart”
• Our cansat is based
on a raspberry pi zero
W
Our antenna…
• Our antenna is made
of obsolete antennas
provided to us by the
City Hall of Setúbal.
Our
groundstation
• Our groundstation is
based on a raspberry
3. This allowed us,
with a small monitor,
to make our
groundstation
portable.
Our parachute
system
• Our parachute
system is based on
the ORION
spacecraft developed
by NASA.
To detect the fall
…
• To detect the drop of
the can we will use
the measure of the
pressure and we will
interpret its variation.
We'll call the
camera…
• We will call the
camera only during
the fall to avoid
overloading the
memory of our
cansat.
Equipment
• Camera: camera v1.3 p/ Raspberry
• GPS: Module GPS NEO-6M – UART
• Transmitter / receiver: RFM69 433MHz
• Sensor P, T: BMP180 integred in an Adafruit IMU
• Raspberry pi zero W (in cansat)
• Raspberry pi 3 (in groundstation)
• Supply: Battery Li-Ion MR18650 - 3,7V 2900mAh
The team
Diogo Cruz, Diogo Matos, Gonçalo Santos, Tiago Boa Vista,
Tiago Caldeira, Tito Abrantes
Teacher: Ana Carneirinho