A team from ToH Institute of Science and Technology (TIST) here has been shortlisted to present their project at the
international CanSat Competition in the US. The competition brings together some of the world’s brightest students to showcase space-related systems they have conceptualised and built. It is open to teams from universities and colleges around the world. TIST team is the first ever from Kerala to be selected for this competition.

The five-member TIST team named Tarang comprises B. Tech sixth semester students Arjun Vinod P V, Vivin , Abraham Mathews, Abhishek N, P V Abimanyu Nair and Mohammed Juhaim Ibnu Abdul Jabbar. The team’s faculty advisor is Electronics department assistant professor Kiran George Varghese. The annual design-build-fly event is being held by the American Astronautical Society (AAS) and American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics (AIAA) in association with NASA, Naval Research Laboratory (USA), Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp and PRAXIS Inc, at Burkett, Texas. CanSat gives students an opportunity to be involved in an end-to-end lifecycle of a complex engineering project from conceptual design through integration, test and actual operation of the system.

The purpose of the CanSat is to mimic the functions of an actual satellite, and thus it is an intertwining of various fields of engineering.

The Mission

The mission this year is to simulate the delivery of a sensor payload to a planet’s surface. The students will design a system consisting of a two primary components – the payload (a large egg) and a re-entry container to protect it. It will be deployed from the rocket, the payload released from the container and land safely with the sensor (egg) intact. All operations will be autonomously done by Cansat.