Design and Development of a Weather Monitoring Satellite, CanSat

Demand for compact, lightweight and low cost satellites is on continuous rise. One of the space models lying under these constraints is CanSat. This paper proposed a complete model of CanSat consisting of mechanical and electrical systems confined within a volume of a soda can with the exception of parachute. It is equipped with a parachute based recovery subsystem which is independent of burst altitude and can be recovered at any time. The proposed CanSat performs the primary mission of sensing the atmospheric parameters like temperature, pressure and altitude; and sending the real time parameters to the ground station GUI for display. It also performs the secondary mission of imagery and stores the images for future use. This paper also describes the ascent, descent velocities and payload calculations for a particular CanSat design. Pragmatically CanSat is a powerful device that provides a platform to realize the fundamental subsystems of an actual satellite.