History of CanSat II

The fist competition held was in 1999 on Black Rock, Nevada, on the 11 of September of that year. The initial aim was to send three 350 mL sized can or a large sized can with a one motor rocket (from AEROPAC amateur rocket group) which lifted 1.8 kg up to 4 km. The cost per flight should be less than $400. This rules were the ones that prevailed until nowadays.

The universities that took part were: University of Tokyo, Titech, Arizona State, etc.
As what the organization is concerned, the ones in charge of the missions was the International Rocket Launch for Students Satellites CanSat (ARLISS). From this year on the competition was held annually.

On the year 2000 a lot of improvements were made. With a wide range of experiments, such as: the DGPS experiment which tried to get GPS measurement and a differential GPS experiment by the cross link between three CanSats. And the landing/ stand up experiment, Whose purpose was to expand landing legs by barometer data.

The days this event took part were the 28-29 of July, and four Japanese universities took part and three from U.S.A.

On 2001 the competition evolved to a more sophisticated technical objective: it was the beginning of the comeback missions, with the rover prototypes. This type of satellites should be able to go back to an specific point absolutely autonomously. And a new rule was proposed: it was forbidden to send any data from the ground station.

It Was held between the 24 and 25 of August, and in it participated five Universities from Japan and two from the United States. And it was, as it was said before, the first come-back competition.

On 2002 a group of students from the Space Robotics Lab, Tohoku University challenged the come-back mission held on August 2-4. The three development issues they focused on where: the configuration of the design, the design of the wheels and motors against the shock from the landing impact and long distance navigation based on GPS. The Tokyo University was the winner of this edition with a prototype that did not reached the target for only 45 meters.

The participation was of six Japanese Universities and another three from the States.

On 2004 the organization gave the contestants (six Japanese universities and three American) a pilot version called CanSat Kit. And it was held between the days 24 and 25 of September.