Students from The Mosslands School complete the AmbaSat “Build Your Own Space Satellite” Course

Not even the sky is the limit for thirty lucky students at The Mosslands School, Wirral. A week-long ‘Space’ programme started with an intensive day-long lesson with AmbaSat’s “Build Your Own Space Satellite” course, culminating in a Friday High Altitude Balloon (HAB) launch into near space!

A very exciting day for the AmbaSat team with The Mosslands students. Each did an absolutely fantastic job in getting to grips with rocket science, soldering irons, electronics and space! Well done to all involved and a very special thank you to Alan and the team at Hi-Impact for their vision and organisation in bringing everything together and also The Mosslands School team, including Mike Lam and Andrew Whiteley for a truly visionary approach to STEM.

Hi-Impact
https://hi-impact.co.uk/

The Mosslands School
https://www.mosslands.co.uk/

Are you interested in running the AmbaSat STEM Course?

The AmbaSat “Build Your Own Space Satellite” Course is a 10 hour or 10 week course which engages students in a wide range of both theory and practical activities related to STEM. These activities include coding, engineering, project management, data analysis, electronics, collaboration, problem solving, production, design, testing and much more. The AmbaSat course nurtures creativity and encourage students to think outside the box.

AmbaSat Course Syllabus

• Lesson 1 : Introduction to AmbaSat. Unpacking your kit and taking a look at what’s inside. The history of satellites. The first satellite in space. Progress through the years.
• Lesson 2 : Assembly Basics. The PCB, Resistors, Capacitors, MCU, radio transceiver. How sensor data is received. Power supply.
• Lesson 3: The Sensors range. What each one does. Student choice of sensor. Written reasons and aims
• Lesson 4: Tools needed for the assembly. Safety and how to use. Practical with some basic soldering tuition and skills assessment.
• Lesson 5: Assembly. Adding the programmer pins & sensor daughterboard
• Lesson 6: Introduction to Coding. Visual Studio Code. Connecting the satellite to the computer
• Lesson 7: Continued coding. Getting the flashing led program working. Coding the sensor. Looking at The Things Network. Testing
• Lesson 8: The AmbaSat Dashboard. Your first signals from your satellite. Viewing and analysing the data.
• Lesson 9: AmbaSat Assembly Review, testing & any rework. Looking at the data which will be sent back to Earth from the AmbaSat-1 satellite, such as CO2 (global warming), infra-red and UV (solar activity)
• Lesson 10: Rocket Science. Rocket theory: stages, centre of gravity, centre of pressure. Rocket Practical: Pump rocket launches with AmbaSat onboard. Analysing the results of the launches (altitude, velocity).
• End of course competition: Best satellite. Best sensor reasons. Which satellite(s) will win a rocket ride.

If you’re interested to learn more or thinking about running your own course, please get in touch. We’d love to help! Email jackie.northrup@ambasat.com