Hyderabad : The Jigyasa team of Hyderabad-based Anurag University won the World CanSat and Rocketry Championship Finals held in Portugal.
The four-member team, G. Maniram (CSE, 3rd year), Y. Bala Praneeth Sagar (ECE, 3rd year), T.R. Divyakanth (ECE, 3rd year), and Rujul Rumale (ECE, 2nd year), competed with six teams from Portugal, Romania, Serbia, and other countries and placed first and emerged world champions.
The World CanSat Rocketry Championship is an international competition open to elite competitors from around the world. Winning this championship is considered the highest achievement in this field.
We are thrilled to announce that we have won two prestigious awards—”World Champions” and “Best Communication”, the students announced on their arrival at the airport.
Our CanSat was recognized for its innovative structural design, efficient communication systems, advanced battery management, comprehensive data collection, and successful survival and recovery mechanisms. Additionally, the team gained immense popularity on Instagram, securing the highest viewership and engagement for their posts, they added.
For their achievement, the students were given away medals and certificates.
CanSat is a miniature satellite with all the necessary features of a real satellite. It is shaped like a soft drink ‘Can’. Despite being a scaled-down version of an actual satellite, it carries all the critical components of a successful launch. Everything is integrated into a compact soft drink can-shaped satellite model, including the onboard computer, power supply, sensors and communication protocol.
Explaining the competition, the students said, the competition had two mission statements:
– Primary mission
- to transmit telemetry data to the ground station at least once every one second.
- CanSat must float on the water’s surface or must survive completely underwater and be easily detected.
– Secondary mission
- Measure water quality parameters
- Maintain the RF communication with the ground station after landing in the water
- Safe recovery
Ten teams from various countries, including Portugal, Serbia, and Romania, were selected for the WCRC finals. Team Jigyasa distinguished themselves by completing both launch tests, unlike other teams whose CanSats failed the secondary mission (water testing). The jury was highly impressed by the team’s performance and invited them to a local public college to share insights into their innovative, lightweight CanSat, which accomplished both missions during the flight tests.
Though ten teams from all over the globe were shortlisted for finals, only six teams could participate because of visa-related issues.
They developed CanSat under the mentorship of Prof. M. Narayana (ECE) and Dr. P. Vishwanath (MECH).
The World CanSat/Rocketry Championship (WCRC) held in Aveiro, Portugal, is the most prestigious competition.
The WCRC Consortium organized the Championship in collaboration with Universidade de Aveiro (UA) and Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT).
Most of our CanSat was handmade from the circuits to the parachute, unlike other competitors. Thanks to this we were quick, able to improve it as per the suggestions given by our judges in the technical review. Our structure was the most unique, having a flap-like design to help it spread its weight on the water and help it float as it had to land on the water after its journey. We did calculations and made the antennas by hand. We did the 3rd iteration of GUI (Graphical User Interface) on the day itself, shared the four team members.
We were all first-time fliers. We got visas just three days before the championship. The very next day we flew. Fortunately, we were at the venue two days before the championship that gave us some to test our satellite. We spent two sleepless nights before the competition. We knew we would make it to the championship but we were nervous, they shared while responding to the felicitation the Anurag University organized on their arrival into the city on Thursday afternoon. They were welcomed to the campus with a big procession, band-baja and felicitation for themselves and their parents in the presence of over 400 students on the campus.
The four boys thanked their mentors, college management for their full cooperation and support and Rakshit Raj (MECH, 3rd year) student of their University for his support of the structural design and descent mechanism of the CanSat.
