Student teams selected for upcoming REXUS/BEXUS flights
Ten student teams from ESA's Member and Cooperating States have been selected by a panel of experts from ESA, the Swedish National Space Board (SNSB), SSC and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) to fly their experiments on future sounding rocket and balloon campaigns.
The teams selected for the REXUS 13/14 (Rocket Experiments for University Students) are:
- CAESAR (Switzerland): Capillarity-based Experiment for Spatial Advanced Research - Investigation into the behaviour of liquids under high Bond numbers, using propellant management devices.
- Gekko (Hungary): Measurement of the variation in electric conductivity with altitude.
- MUSCAT (Sweden): Multiple Spheres for Characterisation of Atmospheric Temperature - Measurement of atmospheric temperatures and horizontal winds in the mesosphere.
- PoleCATS (United Kingdom): Polar test of the Conceptual And Tiny Spectrometer - Demonstration of conceptual space plasma instrumentation to sample plasma energy distributions in upper atmosphere.
- SOLAR (Sweden): Soldering Alloys in Reduced gravity - Studying the effects of reduced gravity on soldering in a low pressure environment.
- StrathSat-R (United Kingdom): Investigation into the use of two Cubesat-based deployable inflatable structures including a solar sail and a dynamic structure that adapts to varying conditions.
The teams selected for the BEXUS 14/15 (Balloon EXperiments for University Students) are:
- AMES (France): Atmospheric Magnetic and Electric Field Sensor.
- BioDos (Hungary): Continuous measurement of the change of UV radiation in relation to altitude – Testing a new method of measuring effects of UV radiation on biological systems.
- MISSUS (Italy): Meteorological Integrated Sensor Suite for Stratospheric Analysis - Multi-sensor atmospheric research package.
- TECHDOSE (Hungary): Development of a Complex Balloon Technology Platform for Advanced Cosmic Radiation and Dosimetric Measurements.
In addition to these teams, DLR also selected four German student experiments to be flown in the same launch vehicles.
The REXUS/BEXUS programme
The REXUS/BEXUS programme is realised under a bilateral Agency Agreement between DLR and the SNSB. The Swedish share of the payload has been made available to students from other European countries through a collaboration with ESA. EuroLaunch, a cooperation between the Esrange Space Center of SSC and the Mobile Rocket Base (MORABA) of DLR, is responsible for campaign management and the operation of the launch vehicles. Experts from DLR, SSC and ESA provide technical support to the student teams throughout the project.
Since the current programme began 5 years ago, a large number of students have been given the opportunity to develop their experiments for flights on REXUS and BEXUS, enabling them to receive training from experts in the field and to gain significant hands-on experience in the design, development and operation of space-related projects.
The BEXUS 14 and 15 balloons will be launched in October 2012, while the REXUS 13 and 14 sounding rockets are scheduled to launch in March 2013. All flights will take place from the Esrange Space Centre in northern Sweden.
A call for new experiment proposals is issued in September of each year, with a deadline of mid-November.
