The Department of Aeronautical Engineering, and Students for Exploration and Development and Science (SEDS), Sri Ramakrishna Engineering College, Coimbatore, in association with Aviocian Technologies, New Delhi conducted a two-day hands-on workshop on “Design and Launching of Satellites – CUBESAT 2020” on Thursday & Friday.
This event is the first of its kind, where students get to design, analyse, build and launch the CubeSat. A CubeSat (U-class spacecraft) is a type of miniaturized satellite for space research. A limited number of 50 students were invited for the workshop and even one Grade X student had come all the way from Darjeeling to participate in the workshop. Arun Jeya Prakash, Director & CEO, Aviocian Technologies Private Limited, leads the student-team.
In the first day of the workshop included the theoretical and technical know-how to designing the CubeSats. Using Computer Aided Design (CAD) Modelling software, all the students were taught to design their own CubeSats following the design constraints and analyse the same for a stable model design. The finalized design models were 3D printed. Students also began their preliminary testing of the electronic modules and sensors to be mounted on the CubeSat.
The second day started off with completing the CubeSat building with required sensors, electronics, Arduino board, parachute and data logger. Necessary coding was also taught to the students. Post lunch, the CubeSats were launched one by one using a 10 ft wide weather balloon. After launch to a certain height, the CubeSats were dropped and it landed on the ground in a spectacular fashion using the parachute. Post processing of the data collected from the sensors was done to study the various parameters in the atmosphere. Dr. N. R. Alamelu, Principal of SREC, Dr. J. David Rathnaraj, Head of Aeronautical Department, R. Velmurugan and Mr. K. Robin Johny, Faculty coordinators of SEDS and the workshop, overlooked the whole event and organized the workshop successfully.