AMARILLO, Texas — For the third year, POTROCS will be hosting the Annual CanSat Competition open to universities and colleges. The American Astronautical Society (AAS) and American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) have organized an annual student design-build-launch competition for space-related topics.

The competition is available to university and college students from the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Europe. Although similar competitions exist for other fields of engineering (robots, radio-control airplanes, racing cars, etc.), most space-related competitions are paper design competitions.

While these are worthwhile, they do not give students the satisfaction of being involved with the end-to-end life cycle of a complex engineering project, from conceptual design, through integration and test, actual operation of the system and concluding with a post-mission summary and debrief. This competition fulfills that need!

This annual competition allows teams from universities and colleges to design and build a space-type system, according to the specifications released by the competition organizing committee, and then compete against each at the end of two semesters to determine the winners.

The 2009 competition will include a workshop for students to learn how to build high power rockets. Analytical Graphics Inc. will host a Satellite Tool Kit workshop during the rocket building session.

For more information go to www.cansatcompetition.com.