SRM varsity students bag second spot in Nasa contest

A group of students from SRM University have secured the second position in the CanSat competition conducted by Nasa to test student’s ability to develop a model satellite with a deployable lander that contains one large raw hen egg.

The competition had two parts, the carrier and lander, Sidhant Dhall, a final-year student of electronics and instrumentation at SRM University and team leader of WelkinSat (VaikunthSat Abhiyan), said on Saturday.

“We deployed our satellite from a rocket at an altitude of about 2,000 metres. Once released, the CanSat has to descend at 10 metres per second and we used three parachutes for different altitudes to unfold mechanically, reducing the descent rate to five metres per second,” he said.

The SRM team got an extra point as they had a buzzer in the lander to help them locate the lander within 500 metres from the control panel. “Immediate forecasting depends on the time of landing,” said Akshat Agarwal, a team member.

This is the first time that SRM University is participating in a competition like CanSat. Out of 35 teams from 10 countries, WelkinSat from SRM University comprising 11 students finished second and was placed first in India ahead of IIT Delhi, Ravi Pachamoothoo, the chairman of the university, said.

Students of the SRM University display their small satellite to their university chairman Ravi Pachamoothoo 

SRM had also sent two more teams for the competition SRM CanSat and Akshayaan, who finished seventh and 11th, respectively.

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