Documents

List of documents

The required deliverables to apply for the programme Orbit Your Thesis! are as follows:

Letter of intent

The letter of intent shall define the topic of the experiment and the hypothesis of the experiment in short. The letter shall detail the names and information of the team members involved with a focus on diversity, inclusiveness, and scientific/engineering balance. At a minimum, the student information will include: name, age, citizenship, and the university and faculty at which they are enrolled. If possible, this letter will also identify a professor or academic supervisor who is willing to support the team through this process. The letter of intent does not freeze the final composition of the team and this information can be subject to changes. The letter of intent is not a required document to apply for the OYT programme, however, it is recommended that teams submit this document as it provides ESA Education time to familiarize themselves with the project, and potentially provide feedback before the experiment proposal submission. There is no official template for the letter of intent.

Privacy notice and consent form

The privacy notice and consent form constitute an agreement between ESA and the applicants on the collection and further processing of personal data, image, and voice. This form must be read by each participant and sent to ESA Education ratified as part of the application process.

Experiment proposal

In the experiment proposal the applicants shall define the members of their team and name a professor or academic supervisor. As mentioned above the team may be subject to change after the initial submission of the application. However, it is recommended that teams do their utmost to maintain a consistent core of team members to maintain knowledge.

The experiment goes on to discuss the project objectives, and a brief literature review. Applying teams should carry out research of the scientific literature to see whether some work has already been done on the same topic or one that is similar. References to the literature are essential in order to demonstrate that teams are fully informed about the current status of research in this field.

The team is expected to show an accurate knowledge of the scientific and technical background of their project, as well as a solid understanding of how the team will realise their experiment, in both a qualitative and quantitative way. Particular attention must be paid to any potential safety hazards the experiment might pose to all stakeholders. In essence, participants are invited to explain what they intend to investigate and how they are going to implement their experiment. The experiment proposal must also explain the relevance of the ISS environment as a means to achieve your scientific research objectives.

It is important that applicants explain in detail how the proposed experiment is related to their syllabi. They should indicate which academic projects they are involved in and how their proposed experiment would be relevant to these projects.

The proposals shall discuss unequivocally how the student teams intend to cope with a possible turn-over in membership. Should a team member decide to leave the project or have completed their academic degree, a plan must exist to ensure an effective transfer of knowledge to their replacement.

The proposal should be intelligible to scientists of various fields and engineers with a general science background.

Preliminary questionnaire

Like the experiment proposal, the preliminary questionnaire shall focus on the scientific and/or technological - related objectives of the project as well as on the technical details for the implementation of the experiment.

First version of the EFSDP

The Experiment Flight Safety Data Package (EFSDP) highlights all the technical aspects of the experiment related to safety that could jeopardize the accommodation and utilization on-board the ISS. This PowerPoint shall be completed as much as possible and will be subject to several iterations should the team be selected.

Letter of endorsing professor

The endorsing professor must explicitly endorse the team through an official letter, with the appropriate academic letter head, in which they pledge their support to all the team members as well as the proposed project. More specifically, the endorsing professor or academic supervisor should clearly state that they support the students’ application and that they accept responsibility for the Orbit Your Thesis! project.

Technical constraints

You can find here the documents defining the technical constraints related to the use of Ice Cubes Facility.