Robotics Team at BHS Successfully Launch Satellite

Godfrey Sosa

Today, the robotics team at Belize High School successfully launched a cube satellite into the lower atmosphere. It’s a part of the FIRST Global Challenge which is a yearly Olympics-style robotics competition organized by the International First Committee Association. The robotics team at the school has competed for some time now. And today, we visited the campus where the team members along with their teachers and mentors carried out the launch.

Godfrey Sosa, Information Technology Director, Belize High School

“This year’s competition focused on not only building a robot to complete some specified task, but it is also the introduction of what we refer to as a cube sat challenge. A cube sat is pretty much a small, miniature satellite that is normally launched into space to carry out some specific task. This challenge does give our students insight as to how these things operate practically in the real world. So getting exposure to these types of devices and components allows of them to see how these things actually work.”

Halle Fuller

Halle Fuller, Cube Sat Designer, Belize High School

“The model of the cube sat is actually only ten centimetres wide; in total, it is ten centimetres and it was designed to fit five sensors in there which is actually more than it seems. The weight is incredibly heavy and so that’s why we need this balloon to be just really big. The design, it is meant to hold the camera; it is also meant to hold the two sensors that will be picking up the particles in the air and it is just in general supposed to be able to pick up the details needed to detect a hurricane.”

Lorenzo Cuellar

Lorenzo Cuellar, Co-Captain, Robotics Team, Belize High School

“We are filling up a miniature scale weather balloon with helium and attached to it is a miniature ten centimetre by ten centimetre cube. In this cube contains sensors such as a camera, temperature sensor, light sensor, humidity, air quality, etc. A cube sat is called a miniature satellite. So the only difference is that a real satellite would go all the way up into space; with this, you are just launching it into earth’s lower atmosphere. So for the challenge that we are doing currently for First Global, it is to launch a cube sat into the air, to collect the data with the sensors and then bring it down and retrieve the data.”