BEXUS 18/19 balloon launch campaign about to start
This year’s Bexus campaign starts on Friday 3 October. Students are travelling to the SSC Esrange Space Center in Northern Sweden on this day. The day after they arrive they will start preparing the stratospheric balloon experiments. The first launch opportunity will be on Wednesday 8 October, followed by a second one on 9 October.
BEXUS 18 will accommodate five university student experiments: A5-UNIBO from Italy, researching the link between aerosols and cloud formation, ARCA from Germany, testing an ADS-B surveillance system for aircraft communication, COUGAR from Germany/Sweden, demonstrating a concept for communication with unmanned vehicles through a relay, POLARIS from Italy, testing a new concept of thermal control by using Dielectric Elastomer actuators, and AFIS-P from Germany, measuring the flux of antiprotons caught in the magnetic field.
The BEXUS 19 payload will be composed of four university student experiments: TORMES 2.0 from Spain, testing a novel Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) reflectometer, ADAM from Germany, measuring the angular dependency of particles interacting with cosmic rays, GranaSAT from Spain, demonstrating the use of a combined start tracker and horizon sensor for an attitude determination system, and TamaOS from Germany, monitoring ozone and oxygen concentrations with an in-house developed sensor.
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The REXUS/BEXUS programme is realised under a bilateral Agency Agreement between the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the Swedish National Space Board (SNSB). Through the collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA), the Swedish share has been made available to students from all ESA Member or Cooperating States. EuroLaunch, a cooperation between the Esrange Space Center of SSC and the Mobile Rocket Base (MORABA) of DLR, is responsible for the campaign management and operations of the launch vehicles. Experts from DLR, SSC, ZARM, and ESA provide technical and logistic support to the student teams throughout the project.
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