ESA at the Big Bang Fair 2014

The Big Bang is the largest celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths for young people (primarily aged 7-19) in the UK. This year it took place in Birmingham from 13 to 16 March, welcoming almost 80 000 visitors. ESA was on hand to show visitors around a demonstration of a clean room.  At its heart, The Big Bang is about careers and futures and highlighting the exciting possibilities that exist for young people with science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) backgrounds.

This year, ESA partnered with the UK Space Agency and Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) to provide a stand at the Big Bang Science Fair. Together they provided exciting activities all about space, alongside more than 100 other science organisations.

ESA participated through the UKSA stand with the theme "How to build a satellite" and offered hands-on activities in a specially designed clean room simulation, demonstrated various sample materials from the ESA laboratories using clean room equipment to the enthusiastic visitors. In the clean room, experiments used an infra-red camera, vacuum chamber and a XRF (X-ray fluorescence spectrometer) showing how ESA tested items in satellites for missions and explained the importance of testing.