Bremen in Germany is the destination now waiting for La Burgoneta Espacial, a team formed by seven promising youngsters from the high school IES EL Burgo de las Rozas, thanks to a soda-can-sized “satellite” nicknamed La Burgoneta

Late April saw the Spanish knock-out round of the CaesaraugustaCanSat Competition, in which 12 teams of students vied with each other to win a berth in the European final. The challenge facing them was to build a satellite from the basic equipment of a battery and microprocessor, launch it to a height of 300 meters and bring it back down to earth with a parachute soft landing. During its descent the satellite had to carry out a scientific mission set by ESA and a secondary mission, designed by each team, before returning to its original launch point.

Easy? Might seem so at first sight, but it becomes much trickier when the satellite has to meet a stiff set of requisites. For a start it had to weigh between 300 gr and 350 gr and secondly it had to cost less than €500.

Nothing daunted, these seven pupils of IES El Burgo de las Rozas designed a soda-can-sized satellite to pull off first place in the national knock-out round, winning themselves a berth in the European Cansat Competition to be held from 28 June to 2 July, when they will compete with 17 other teams from countries like the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Germany and Poland.