Ariane 6 science-after-school experiment sends back striking snaps

Earth, brought to you by some of the youngest operators to fly in space. The PariSat experiment launched aboard Ariane 6’s first flight was developed by a team aged between 15 and 25 years old, from amateur space club GAREF AEROSPATIAL.

Their goal is simple: to test and verify the Stefan-Boltzmann law of thermal, ‘black-body’ radiation, by finding out which materials work best to dissipate heat in space.

Eight square plates just 4 cm wide are being tested to see how they function as space radiators, each chosen to test a wide variety of properties such as the materials, colour, and how they react to being heated and cooled as they fly through space.

To compliment the science experiment, PariSat includes a photo experiment – based on an GoPro that the team specially adapted and qualified for space and controlled by a module entirely designed by GAREF AEROSPATIAL.

The adapted camera includes a fisheye lens, which accentuates Earth’s curvature in the beautiful images of our Pale Blue Dot.

The PariSat team are now in the process of analysing all the data their experiment gathered, which was beamed to Earth and received by the Swedish Space Corporation’s Kiruna station in Sweden.