This was the first year we took part in the competition. Our physics teacher told us about it, and within a week we had put together a team. In the picture you can see the team and our mentors — on the left is our programming teacher, on the right our physics teacher. Our goal was to build a device, a CanSat, able to examine how habitable a given area is.
The organisers ran conferences where we could get to know the other teams, and expanded our knowledge with all kinds of talks, which we appreciated. There was one small catch: we had to travel two and a half hours to and from Budapest each time.
As first-time competitors, the season felt like it flew by. At the start we thought we'd finish the project well before the launch, but in the end we only got to the finishing touches right at the last moment.
The project's afterlife
After we finished the device, members of our "CanSatLab", the Skywalkers rocket-building team, offered to launch it for us. (We will write a blog post about that once it happens.) We are grateful for the opportunity! With what we learned this year, our goal now is to build a better satellite for the next competition — and, of course, to actually finish it before the launch this time. A few teammates moved on and new ones joined once they understood what the competition is really about, so hopefully we will pull it off with the new lineup.
