Our Mission
As every other team, we will execute the primary mission. The primary mission consists in measuring air temperature and pressure, receiving that data, at least, once per second and being able to interpret that information. What distinguishes us from the other teams is our secondary mission. Our main goal for the secondary mission is to test and validate a new and innovative technology created by the Faculty of Sciences and Technology of Lisbon’s NOVA University (FCT NOVA) - thin film sensors.
We chose this as our main goal because this technology has lots of advantages comparing to traditional sensors: they can be printed in various substrates; they’re flexible, which allows them to adapt to the surface’s shape; they have a reduced volume and weight, which could help, amongst other things, to reduce the costs of space exploration (because it increases the available volume for other components); etc.. We believe that this sensors could have a big positive influence in our daily lives due to the big amount of applicabilities they have and that is why we decided to test and validate them. That way, we will raise awareness to this idea that we believe that has potential and that could change our lives for the better.
We have 2 thin film sensors (temperature and UV light) and we will test this technology by comparing the values obtained through commercial sensors with those we receive through the thin film sensors.
Besides this main goal that revolves around the thin film sensors, we also have other goals for this project. Performing advanced TT&C (Tracking, Telemetry & Command) is one of them. For that, we built an automatic alignment antenna, which is a Cross Yagi, that will automatically track our satellite throughout it’s descent. We also intend to have data encryption, data backup (SD Card) and redundancy (by having 2 ground stations - the automatic alignment antenna and regular one, which is a Regular Yagi - and also by having multiple sensors). Another one of our goals is to treat data in real time.