Plants on Mars - Build an automatic plant watering system

This resource from the European Space Agency is presented as eight activities which guides students to create an automatic plant watering system, suitable for use on a possible future colony on the planet Mars. Students have opportunities to use and develop their skills to plan, design and analyse various soil-...

Design your parachute - A guide to landing your CanSat safely

This resource gives students a brief overview of the different options available when building a parachute for the CanSat Competition. Students will learn about the underlying physics of parachutes and their design and how to control the speed of their CanSat. 

Learning objectives:

• Understand...

Communicating with Radio - Ground control to major CanSat

To understand how everyday devices like mobile phones, routers and satellites work, we need to understand what radio waves are and how we can transmit information with them. Radio communication is one of the key elements in our CanSat. All the data needed for our scientific experiment will be sent from the CanSat...

Getting Started with CanSat - A Guide to the Primary Mission

This module outlines the main features of the Primary Mission for the CanSat Competition. In the Primary Mission, teams must measure the temperature and pressure and send the information to their ground station. Students will learn about the differences between the sensors they can use and about the challenges...

Meet Arduino! - Introduction to Arduino Computing using C++

This guide for students allows them to explore technology used in space through the Arduino tool. They can build circuits to blink an LED and to measure temperature, pressure and altitude. The basics of programming in C++ will be introduced using the Arduino IDE (Integrated Development Environment) software. This...

Steve Spittle – Emerging Technology Lead in Digital Intelligence

Steve looks at new technologies that advance the space industry.  He works at the Space Applications Catapult, in Harwell.  He gives the example of how image processing techniques used in the satellite industry can be used in the medical imaging.  Imaging data has also been used to prevent illegal logging and to...

Shefali Sharma - Senior Commercial Strategist

Shefali engages with customers, media and investors to help to grow the company.  Shefali works at Oxford Space Systems, a company developing innovative technology that is launched into space.  She often helps to act as the link between customers and the engineers working on the satellite designs. 

Abbie Hutty - ExoMars Delivery Manager

Abbie is an engineer working at Airbus Defence and Space.  She is in charge of ensuring that all the parts of the ExoMars Rover come together on time and to the right specification. 

Abbie sets two challenges for students: to write an algorithm for a rover to avoid rocks on a grid and to come up with ideas...