Report of CanSat Leader Training Program

CanSat Leader Training Program (CLTP) has been held in Japan from 14th February to 14th March 2011. This program is designed for researchers and educators in space engineering to learn the basic concept of space education, and also to experience practical hands-on training, system engineering, project management and teamwork. Participants are 12 and from 10 countries this year: Turkey, Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Sri Lanka, Australia, Nigeria, Algeria, Egypt and Vietnam. A microcontroller module called mbed was used for the main computer, as it has online development environment as well as quite a few libraries for users to get used to it rapidly. In the first week, starting with lecture of mbed, three teams built very simple CanSats. The CanSats were launched by model rocket (2m long and goes up to the altitude of 350m) in Kada, Wakayama. Advanced level “come-back” CanSats were built in the rest of the weeks. Unfortunately, those CanSats were not launched due to the earthquake in Japan on 11th March 2011. However, CLTP ended successfully as they all experienced the primary purposes of this program. Instruction material of space education focused on CanSat is now in progress, and it is going to be tailored and translated into the version of respective countries. The basic concept of space education, the background of CLTP, and the detailed contents of program are explained in this paper.