Team Aphelion Representing Canada in Europe!

Team Aphelion is looking for $15,000 to support the CanSat club and team at Eric Hamber Secondary School, promoting STEM and inspiring Canada’s engineers of tomorrow!

Hi, we're Team Aphelion from Vancouver, Canada! Our team has been selected by the Canadian Satellite Design Challenge Management Society (CSDCMS) to represent Canada at the 2024 European Space Agency international event in the Netherlands after winning the national CanSat competition against teams across Canada. We will have the opportunity to work with students from around the world in a truly international setting to experience engineering in the space industry. We will visit state of the art facilities, meet experts in the field, and network with other young bright minds.

So, what's a CanSat?

A CanSat is a small, 300g soda can-sized satellite that we built and designed from scratch to execute a science-fair-like mission. After being launched 1 kilometre into the sky, our satellite would drift down in a parachute while collecting telemetry data, which would be relayed to a ground station.

Our satellite would also need to complete a secondary mission...finding alien life! Specifically, a series of motors tucked inside the CanSat will drill into the ground, take a soil sample, and test the sample against a ninhydrin chemical test. The ninhydrin will change colour if it detects the presence of amino acids in the soil, which are a significant sign of potential life!

Cost Breakdown

As a club team from a public school competing nationally, all costs are currently borne by the team members. Our proposed funding would support us in representing Canada at the elite event in the Netherlands, sharing our experiences with our members and many others down the road.

We are dedicating a significant portion of the sponsorship money this year to maintaining the club in the coming years. We hope that the cost can cover the build and outreach costs of not just the year’s CanSat venture, but for years down the line.

A final message

Our team invested significant time and cost into building and designing the CanSat, as well as accommodation and traveling to the launch site. We are a driven and capable team with a shared passion for engineering and aerospace, as well as educational outreach in inspiring the next generation of scientists.

We are grateful that the competition went our way this year, but the costs we incurred while building without any funding or financial support this year will not be sustainable in the future without your generous help. We hope the generosity of our community can help carry on this success. By sponsoring us, you will not only be helping our team achieve our dream but also directly championing STEM education and outreach for years to come.