EEB3 CanSat Team reaches Belgium finals!

EEB3 CanSat  team ‘DORA’ which consists of  5 S6 Physics and S6 Physics lab students ( ABAZIS Alkinoos  S6 ELA,  KORYCKI Jakub  S6 NLA, PIPERIGOU‐GRAMMATIKA Maria‐Ioanna  S6 ENA,  RAMESH Anirudhh  S6 ENA,   STUER Filippos  S6 ELB) coached by  Physics teacher Ioannis Theocharopoulos  took part at the semifinals of  the Belgian CanSat competition  organized by Innoviris at the Brussels Planetarium.  CanSat is the biggest and most demanding Aerospace and STEM competition organized worldwide by NASA and ESA in national chapters.

The team competed with schools from all over Belgium.  The DORA CanSat project was presented before a jury that consisted of  aerospace related scientists and engineers , Dirk Frimount, astrophysicist and the first Belgian astronaut, the director of Brussels Planetarium, the director of Euro Space Center,  representative scientists and researchers from ULB, KU Luven, SOLVAY, ESERO and engineers from  QinetiQ Space and T-Minus.

The team managed to convince the jury and gained one of the 12  seats for the finals  that will take place at Elseborn Camp Early May. The team  will have the chance complete their mission and  launch the  satellite with a real rocket! The winning team  of the finals will represent Belgium at the European Finals organized by ESA in Italy in mid July. This is not the  first time that an EEB3  CanSat team  has  the opportunity to launch their mission. EEB3  CanSat teams  have  a high rate of achievement in this competition by reaching the Belgium finals 3 times in the last 4 years. (Teams: ATX (2016), EEB3^0G(2017), DORA(2019))

Regarding the mission, this year the team  created  a space probe that remotely sends habitability related data acquired by a set of sensors  to a ground station. One of the sensors, a spectropolarimeter that measures aerosol  was developed by the  team with the support of the Photonics Group in VUB.  The acquired habitability data  are processed in real time by Machine Learning and  Artificial Intelligence   algorithms  to calculate the habitability and terraforming probability of an unknown exoplanet or environment .

The APEEE congratulates our DORA team for the tremendous work and investment within and beyond school working hours and wishes all members a very successful performance in the Finals!