KTÜ Students to Launch Satellite

KTÜ Students to Launch Satellite A satellite prepared by students of the Space Club at Karadeniz Teknik Üniversitesi (KTÜ) will be launched into the sky in a competition organized by NASA. Students from the KTÜ Space Club will reach the finals of the CanSat Competition, the world's most prestigious model satellite competition, organized by the American Astronomical Society (AAS), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and a space and aerospace technology company. The KTÜ Space Club, which has the distinction of being the only team to participate in Turkey's Teknofest Türksat Model Satellite Competition for 6 consecutive years, will reach the finals of the CanSat Competition, the world's most prestigious model satellite competition. A 9-member team called KTÜ UZAY CanSat, consisting of Karadeniz Teknik Üniversitesi Electrical-Electronics Engineering students Kadri Can Ülker, Alipaşa Öksüz, Mustafa Durukan, Enes Mercan, Mechanical Engineering student Murat Duysak, Computer Engineering students Yunus Gündüz, Mustafa Filiz, Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering student Resul Yılmaz, and Geomatics Engineering student Duhan Günsel, completed the preliminary design report phase with a score of 99.0741%, ranking fourth in the world. Following the preliminary elimination, the KTÜ Space Club qualified among the first 48 teams to advance to the finals. The club will submit its Critical Design Report on 1 April. After carrying out environmental tests, the students will launch their satellites 700 meters high using rockets on 9-12 June on the campus of Virginia Tech University in Virginia, United States. The Model Satellite produced by the students will perform various communication and mechanical tasks as it descends from 700 meters altitude to the ground. The competition results will be determined following presentations to judges after the flight. In the competition, which receives over 100 applications worldwide, the KTÜ UZAY CanSat Team continues to work voluntarily in their workshops to maintain their success. Following what will be the result of a grueling 7-month process, Kadri Can Ülker, captain of the team aiming for world championship after the flight and a third-year student at Karadeniz Teknik Üniversitesi (KTÜ) Electrical-Electronics Engineering Department, said: "I am taking on the role of team captain for the competition our team will participate in this year in America. We completed the previous report phase, which is the first elimination stage, as the fourth in the world. Following the upcoming critical design phase and subsequent tests, we will participate in the CanSat competition in America on 9-12 June. First of all, the competitions we participate in are competitions conducted on model satellites. The main objective of these competitions is to perform the tasks of a communication satellite on the ground. To do this, our satellites are placed in a rocket and sent to 700 meters altitude. As they descend from 700 meters altitude to the ground, they transmit various sensor data from their payloads to our ground station. This concept is the main operational method in our competitions," he said. "I See Our Chances as Very High" Stating that the designs they produced have never been done in the world before, Ülker said: "In previous years, NASA launched and landed a helicopter that had a mission on Mars. You could think of this as a device placed on Mars, for example. This satellite can descend and collect data using sensors on it to transmit it to our world. The team competing in America consists of 9 people. Our team includes students from Electrical-Electronics Engineering, Geomatics Engineering, Computer Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering departments. I see our chances as very high. We are a team playing for first place. Hopefully we will return from America with first place. Teams from America, Europe, Indonesia, India, China, and Turkey are participating in the competition. Actually, teams from within Turkey challenge us the most. Besides this, India could present a challenge. We sent our preliminary design report in February and held a presentation with American judges based on the report results. As a result of this presentation, our report score was determined as 99.07 out of 100. With this score, we ranked fourth in the world. We have a critical design report coming up on 1 April, and we continue our work for that. Our goal is first place. In line with the vision and mission we have established, we are pursuing a CubeSat project and a ground station project with the aim of directing space studies in our country in the future. Besides these, we know that students who have graduated from our club continue to work on defense industry and space and aerospace projects in Turkey, and we support them," he said. The KTÜ Space Club, which achieved third place in 2016, third and fourth places with two teams in 2021, obtained third place in the Professional Category in the Model Satellite Competition held in Iran in 2019 on the international stage and second place in the Latin American Rocket Competition held in 2021. The KTÜ Space Club wants to contribute to space work in Turkey through an initiative after the competition to increase awareness of space in Turkey and to promote technological work in this field.