Interdisciplinary student team lands egg safely in international competition

The Queen's Space Engineering Team's satellite carried an egg in a pop-can-sized case about 30 centimetres long.

The Queen’s Space Engineering Team (QSET) has boldly gone where no Queen’s team has gone before – second-place at an international aerospace competition.

QSET competed against 20 teams from Canada, the U.S., Mexico, Turkey and India taking second in their first annual CanSat competition, held this summer in Texas.

“It’s essentially a glorified egg drop,” said QSET team captain Matthew Dermody.

An egg was encased in a pop-can-sized satellite about 30 centimetres in length that housed all the electronics and protected the egg from a fall of about 500 metres.

Along with the basic requirements, judges gave extra marks for advanced challenges such as landing in a certain location and carrying a second egg.

QSET is comprised of Queen's undergraduate students from all faculties and disciplines. Each member brings a unique aspect and view to the team which contributes to the team's ability to tackle a large variety of competitions.

It was a great educational experience for the Queen’s students, whom consulted with officials from NASA as they designed their satellite and explored the hands-on-process of design and implementation.

The winning team was the International Institute of Information Technology in India.