Student Training Week at ESRANGE (4/02 - 10/02)

As a next step in the REXUS/BEXUS project, four members of each team were invited to the Student Training Week in ESRANGE Space Center, Kiruna. Here, Tom, Goele, Kirian and Lasse were representing our OSCAR-QLITE team.

Sunday morning we left Hasselt, three planes and four flights later we finally arrived in Kiruna. There, SSC welcomed us to their homebase ESRANGE. After a short night, five days full of interesting training sessions were awaiting us.

These taught us a lot about all different sides of flying our experiment on a stratospheric balloon. During a dedicated BEXUS session, we built our experiment from cardboard. Then we fitted it on the gondola together with the other BEXUS26 experiments: Tubular (SE), LODESTAR (SE) and IMUFusion (DE).

Beside of these training sessions, plenty of teambuilding activities enriched our stay, as for example snow sculpturing. About this, we can proudly tell you that the OSCAR-QLITE experiment design earned the third place out of seventeen teams!

So far so good, but the crucial point of the week was the PDR presentation. We presented our preliminary design to the panel and got some really helpful comments. During the “Ask an expert session”, we had the opportunity to gather more information about our weak points and discuss about it.

The week ended with a visit to the world famous Icehotel, a tasty farewell dinner and a magnificent last evening.

This week was a unique opportunity to meet all great experiment teams. Sadly enough, this was the last time all REXUS/BEXUS teams gathered.

We really enjoyed the Student Training Week with all the experts and other teams!

A few days ago, we received the Preliminary Design Review result: it’s a full pass for OSCAR-QLITE. This means we can totally concentrate us on the Critical Design of our experiment. So next up: Critical Design Review in May at ESTEC, Noordwijk. Stay tuned for more!