War! Students are crumpling under attacks of the ruthless dark lord, the Examinations Office. There are heroes on both sides. Evil is everywhere. Christmas is in 48 days.

And the Palpatine Mk. II didn’t fit, which is why a whole new case had to be designed and printed quick-smart. With the semester ending, the Unleash Space was enacting a dastardly plan to close for the holidays (and cut us off from convenient 3D printer access); however, with characteristic daring and wit, our team made a heroic raid deep into Unleash territory and printed off one final case just as the whole place came tumbling down. Much like Prometheus of ancient myth, DEW-IT Corp. had managed to steal a gift to all humanity from the clutches of the gods – but unlike Prometheus, we didn’t even get pecked by birds, making us officially better and more heroic than Prometheus. Anyway, the Palpatine Mk.III fit snug as a bug:

Golly! What a tremendous victory for all humankind! Unfortunately, we couldn’t celebrate, for several of our team had succumbed to sudden fits of responsibility and were busy studying for exams. Here are the survivors mourning their loss:

🙁

 

we were pretty pleased with the final product, though

In the final stages of our development process, we got the battery working, figured out the code for writing all the Palpatine’s data to an SD card, and sorted out triggering the camera.

Graphing accelerometer output as the sat is tossed up and down.

100% battery powered!

Testing the SD-card writing functionality.

Writing ALL the data to the SD card.

An example of the incredible imagery taken by the Mk.III during testing.

The finished Mk.III, tightly packed and ready for launch!

At last, on the eve of the launch day, the Palpatine Mk.III was complete and ready for its ascension into the lower troposphere. Would the launch proceed successfully? Would Palpatine be the senate? Would our careful programming execute as planned?
Tune in tomorrow (or, like, later tonight) for answers to all these questions and more! Excitement! Drama! Action! You won’t want to miss The Heroic Scientific Exploits of the Palpatine – Episode IV: Journey to the Bottom of the Troposphere!

Merry Christmas to all,

Team DEW-IT