CanSat
Neptune our latest satellite that was made for the 2026 CanSat competition, which was designed with modularity in mind, with the goal to upgrade it in the future.
Expandability and flexibility
The satellite is made up of 13 panels of identical geometry, which can be interchanged at any time, ensuring easy assembly and allowing for future developments.
Muon flux detection
The secondary mission of the satellite is to determine the muon flux using a plastic scintillator and a silicon photomultiplier, which are detected by a peak detector circuit.
Live camera feed
A 5 megapixel camera is mounted on the satellite, which streams the captured image live and can capture high quality photos remotely, which can be either stored on an SD card or transmitted via radio.
Redundant system
The primary mission of the satellite is redundantly designed. The primary mission is performed with quadruple redundancy and an additional 4 sensors can be remotely enabled as a cold backup in case of a sensor failure.
Multichannel communication
The satellite communicates in the 868 MHz ISM frequency band with LoRa modulation, and is also able to communicate with the ground station via the LTE mobile network, which can be useful during recovery operations.
Remote control
The satellite is fitted with sensors to measure power consumption, and it is optionally possible to switch on and off the individual sub-units from the ground station in the event of an anomaly or simply to save energy.
Hello. I am Neptune. 👋
Learn about the structure of the CanSat satellite
On-board computer and muon counter
In the upper block is the On-board computer, which is capabale of managing 6 energy channels (consuption measurment, remote switching).
Our muon counter is a low-power, high-performance module, optimized for Neptune
Primary mission
The middle block contains the sensors required for the CanSat's primary mission and the inertial measurement unit (IMU)
The primary mission is ensured through multiple redundancies, to mitigate sensor failure
Camera and communication module
The bottom block contains a 5-megapixel camera, whose images are transmited by a high-performance processor over the LTE (4G) mobile network to the ground station.
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