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ESA parabolic flight campaign for students 2002



For so long I have been dreaming to be on a parabolic flight myself.
As you can see, sometimes dreams do come true.

After reading on the ESA website last year, that they conduct such a campaign for students every year, I spontaneously decided to apply for the participation in the year 2002.


The team

Our experiment

The feeling of Zero-G

Results

Picture gallery

Press releases

ESA Fly your thesis programme




















That meant first to wait patiently, until in October 2001 the first webform for the participants was online.
Then I had to find some interested students that were ready to face this kind of adventure. So I asked ESA to send me posters, and see there, I hardly had hung them up in the FH Offenburg and my "advertisement" next to it, I had my team together within one day.

First consulting discussions followed on what we could submit to ESA as an experiment, because that is the condition of ESA for a successful application:
To invent an experiment that is as good as possible, which the students then are allowed to perform on the parabolic flight by themselves.

In January the webform for the whole group followed, and then it was time to make the design of the experiment, which was submitted to ESA at the end of February.

Again a long time of waiting followed, during that time we managed to find a journalist who was ready to follow us during the campaign and so do the necessary outreach activity. This too is a requirement of ESA - no participation without journalist.

At the beginning of April we finally got to know that we were preselected for the campaign, and finally, on the 23. of April we rejoiced:

We are selected!

The Fachhochschule financed our experiment, which we performed on the flight.

Besides, we have won the competition for the design of this year's mission patch of the campaign, that means for us that we get 1000 Euro from ESA for the travel to and from Bordeaux. So our travel costs were covered.

Then all team members passed the medical for the flight!

We now have another journalist who will also accompany us on the flight; after our originally assigned journalist cancelled his participation, his name is Werner Schaeppi, he comes from Switzerland and is working for becoming the first space tourist of his country.

The last test of the experiment was successful, see in Experiment.

In the time during the campaign we also could be found on the website of the FH Offenburg!

After all we had a nice time and lots of fun in Bordeaux, pictures of our flight and the stay there can be found in the gallery.