(Press Release)
Five students from Kiruna launched a scientific experiment on the BEXUS-7 balloon from ESRANGE last week. “Our idea was basically a vacuum cleaner, we collected dust in the air, up to 27 km above the Kiruna region”, says Martin Siegl, one of the team members. He had built the experiment together with four other friends at IRV and IRF in Kiruna. The team had found excellent facilities there. “But the project would not have been possible without the financial help we got from PROGRESSUM”, Siegl points out. “The team would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who worked with us, especially our supervisors and the staff at IRV, IRF and ESRANGE for their input and help, even in stressful situations.” The campaign itself was organized and financed by a cooperation of the ESA Education office together with Rymdstyrelsen, Rymdbolaget and German DLR.
During the flight of their experiment - the students called it “Stratospheric Census” - it passed a layer of dust from a volcanic eruption.
“We are very excited about this and now we are looking forward to the analysis of our results.” Just like in a vacuum cleaner, the students had used a pump to generate an air stream and a filter to collect dust particles. This filter will now be examined, after it had been recovered from the balloon’s landing site close to Rovaniemi, Finland. “Luckily we didn’t land in a lake, we were just 2 meters away from one”, says Mark Fittock who had worked with the mechanical aspects of the setup.
The whole team, people from Germany, Austria, Netherlands and Australia agrees that Kiruna is the ideal place to be a space student. ” ESRANGE, where we launched, is close by.
They have experience in getting experiments off the ground. IRV and IRF have the expertise to build them. And PROGRESSUM made all of that possible with its support to us,” they say.
The team of Stratospheric Census is looking forward to many more exciting projects!
