Review 1: Putting it Together
At this point, you've learned all the necessary skills to implement the main mission of your CanSat. While the lessons won’t stop here, they will now dive into more advanced programming and electronics concepts, which will allow you to design even more capable CanSats.
Before moving forward, let’s take a moment to review what we’ve learned so far. In aerospace engineering, it’s customary to hold a design review before advancing to the next phase—so let’s do the same.
In professional software development, the process typically begins with defining clear requirements that specify what the software must achieve. Once the requirements are established, the software is implemented to meet those specifications. Finally, it’s important to verify that the software performs as expected and fulfills the defined requirements.
Let’s apply this approach to our CanSat project. The competition rules set some requirements for the software to fulfill:
Primary Mission Software Requirements
Req #1:
Sample air temperature at least once per second (≥ 1 Hz).
Req #2:
Sample air pressure at least once per second (≥ 1 Hz).
Req #3:
Store the measured parameters locally.
Req #4:
Transmit the measured parameters to a ground station.
Try implementing the software, and also think about how to verify that the requirements are met.
In the first advanced lesson, we will extend on our knowledge of radio transmissions to establish two-way communication and command the satellite instead of just receiving data on the ground station. This isn't necessarily required for a successful CanSat mission, but can open new interesting avenues.