November is a busy month for Magnitude.io!

UNISEC Global

I’m currently in Kyushu Japan during a break of the University Space Engineering Consortium annual meeting as I write this post. Student representatives from 36 countries are in attendance to share the work they are doing in CanSats, ground stations, and small satellites.

During this event I have had the opportunity to meet with many universities and present the work that we have done with Intel and the launch of Edison CanSat as well as share the results of our Space Hackathon held last weekend at UC Berkeley, Sudo Room and Counter Culture Labs.

Space Hackathon

With support from our sponsors Intel and CITRIS, on November 7th through November 9th more than 70 students and makers gathered at UC Berkeley to tackle 3 primary space-based challenges over the course of 40 continuous hours: CanSat, ARLISS robot, MultiLab on the International Space Station, or a space challenge of a team’s own design.

7 teams made it through the weekend gauntlet to present their final work that Sunday. We are impressed with the hard work and persistence that all teams showed during the event and are proud of the winning teams that unlocked the next level of the challenge:

CanSat: Space Exploration Society at Berkeley. Building upon our Open CanSat, this team demonstrated fantastic collaboration, team support, and tenacity. They have won a launch aboard a high-powered M-class rocket in 2015 provided that they can demonstrate full functionality of primary sensors.

ARLISS robot: Team Cripplrz. The ARLISS (A Rocket Launch for International Student Satellites) come back competition has students from around the world design a fully autonomous robot that must return to a designated area after being ejected from a rocket at over 2 miles altitude. Team Cripplrz demonstrated savvy engineering for harsh terrain conditions within the volume and mass requirements. The UC Berkeley team will continue to work on this project with our support to compete in the 2015 ARLISS event next year in Nevada USA.

MultiLab aboard the International Space Station: Team LyF^3 (Life Cubed). Tackling the hardest challenge the the hackathon Team LyF^3 won a 90-day provisional award to be able to work toward the possibility of flight aboard Space Tango’s new MultiLab on the International Space Station. The provisional period will enable the team to determine its organizational model (for-profit, non-profit), and isolate a specific exobiology experiment for the constructed 1U module.

CITRIS Innovation Award: Team EdiSense. Showing collaborative spirit, relentless pursuit to solve given problems, and the ability to pivot in the middle of the event while still delivering a working product, this single-person team earned full access to the CITRIS Invention Lab at UC Berkeley for the spring semester.

Next stop: Tokyo

We’re joining with Intel and traveling to Tokyo Maker Faire this weekend to share what we’ve been up to since the Black Rock Desert launch in September. We’ll be on hand to discuss Edison in the ARLISS program, and the future potential of Edison as an edge device in Low Earth Orbit.

A lot has happened already, but the month is only half over. Look for more from us soon!