Got a Coke can? You've got the beginnings of a satellite.

Students in Stanford's Space Design class use a beverage can to house a radio, sensors and whatever else they want to put in their satellite. Robert Twiggs, a consulting professor in Stanford's Space Systems Development Laboratory, calls them CanSats.

"It's like a real satellite except we build it in a Coke can," says Twiggs. "The reason for the Coke can is that it restricts them, makes them pretty small. And it's pretty novel when you say, 'I built a satellite in a Coke can!'"

Although freshman Mohammed Abdoolcarim wasn't in the space design class, he met with Twiggs early last year, was assigned a mentor and began designing a CanSat. Over the summer, he and another student, Colleen Acosta, built one that contained a radio, a temperature sensor and a digital camera.

UnColas? Undergraduates Colleen Acosta and Mohammed Abdoolcarim display CanSats – satellites built in beverage cans. Photo: L.A. Cicero

In August, some rocket-hobbyist friends of Twiggs launched Abdoolcarim and Acosta's CanSat up to 15,000 feet. As it parachuted back to Earth, the students had 15 to 20 minutes to communicate with it. That's about the same amount of time it takes a real satellite to fly from horizon to horizon in low Earth orbit.

To Abdoolcarim, the most exciting part was getting the data on the computer as the CanSat parachuted down, "because then I knew the whole thing worked."

Twenty-seven other CanSats flew that day as well, built by students from four Japanese universities, a California junior high school and Arizona State University. The students are part of a program called ARLISS, for A Rocket Launch For International Student Satellites, started by Twiggs two years ago.

Amatuer high powered rockets lift the CanSats to 12,000 feet. Here, a group from the University of Tokyo prepares to launch a CanSats in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada in July 2000. Photo: Colleen Acosta

"The students loved it," Twiggs says. "And the Japanese beat our socks off." Their CanSats talked to each other and sent pictures from digital cameras that toggled around. One CanSat even had a global positioning system receiver that was so good at detecting the satellite's location that the students went out to meet it. "Their professor grabbed the CanSat before it hit the ground," Twiggs says.

This summer, Abdoolcarim is hoping to build a CubeSat. He does it for the enjoyment and the learning, he says: "That's the true motivation for a project."

Aiming high, students launched CanSats at Black Rock, Nevada, in August of 2000. CanSats flew up to 15,000 feet, and students communicated with the devices as they descended back to Earth. Photo: Skip LaFetra

• A rocky road to outer space: 1/31/01