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ESA Parabolic Flights, Drop Tower and Centrifuge Opportunities for University Students

Microgravity Science and Technology volume 23, pages 181–189 (2011)Cite this article

Abstract

“Fly Your Thesis!—An Astronaut Experience” is an educational programme launched by the ESA Education Office that aims to offer to European students the unique opportunity to design, build, and eventually fly, a scientific experiment as part of their Master or Ph.D. thesis. Selected teams accompany their experiments onboard the Zero-G aircraft for a series of three flights, each consisting of 30 parabolas, with each parabola providing about 20 s of microgravity. ESA Education Office financially supports the flights and part of the hardware development, as well as travel and accommodation for participants. For the first edition of this programme, four student teams were selected to participate in the 51st ESA Microgravity Research Campaign in November 2009. The 2010 edition of the programme was launched in April 2009 and the final selection was announced in January 2010. In parallel, ESA Education Office is setting up two new hands-on activities to provide European university students with access to drop tower (up to 9.3 s of microgravity) and centrifuge (from 1 to 20 times Earth’s gravity) facilities. Through ELGRA, the selected student teams are working in close contact with renowned European scientists working in gravity-related research. This paper will introduce the three new educational programmes and present the selected experiments, as well as give information to students interested in the future editions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. European Space Agency (ESA), ESA-ESAC, LEX-COV, P.O. Box 78, 28691, Villanueva de la Cañada, Madrid, Spain

    Natacha Callens, Javier Ventura-Traveset, Thomas-Louis de Lophem & Carlos Lopez de Echazarreta

  2. European Space Agency (ESA), ESA-ESTEC, D/HSF-UPS, P.O. Box 299, 2200, AG Noordwijk, The Netherlands

    Vladimir Pletser

  3. European Low Gravity Research Association (ELGRA), Dutch Experiment Support Center (DESC), ACTA, Dept. Oral Cell Biology, VU-University, van der Boechorststraat 7, 1081, BT Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Jack J. W. A. van Loon

Authors
  1. Natacha Callens
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  2. Javier Ventura-Traveset
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  3. Thomas-Louis de Lophem
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  4. Carlos Lopez de Echazarreta
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  5. Vladimir Pletser
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  6. Jack J. W. A. van Loon
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Natacha Callens.

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Open Access This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.

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Callens, N., Ventura-Traveset, J., de Lophem, TL. et al. ESA Parabolic Flights, Drop Tower and Centrifuge Opportunities for University Students. Microgravity Sci. Technol. 23, 181–189 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12217-010-9181-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12217-010-9181-1

Keywords

  • Microgravity
  • Hypergravity
  • Parabolic flight
  • Drop Tower
  • Centrifuge
  • Education