ESA opens “Spin your Thesis!” student experiments programme

September 10, 2013 TopSpacer

ESA education initiative with a big centrifuge:

Spin Your Thesis! 2014 call now open

9 September 2013: Teams of university students are invited to submit proposals for hypergravity experiments for the next ‘Spin Your Thesis!’ campaign which will take place in autumn of 2014. The deadline to submit proposals is 9 December 2013.

ESA’s ‘Spin Your Thesis!’ (SYT) programme gives undergraduate and postgraduate students from ESA Member and Cooperating States* a rare opportunity to design and conduct experiments that need hypergravity, as part of their syllabus.

The LDC at ESTEC

The experiments can be devoted to a broad spectrum of science and technology. They will be conducted in the Large Diameter Centrifuge (LDC) in ESA’s Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in the Netherlands.

Mounted inside the centrifuge gondolas, experiments can be exposed to accelerations of up to 20 times Earth’s gravity. The centrifuge is flexible in terms of experiment scenarios, duration and hardware.

The LDC supports six gondolas, plus one in the centre for control experiments. Each gondola supports a maximum payload of 80 kg, and student experiments can last from a few minutes to several days, if needed.

A review board will select the best experiment proposals to be performed in the LDC. The European Low Gravity Research Association (ELGRA) will support ESA in the team selection process and provide expert mentors throughout the experiment design and completion.

Students who have taken part in previous campaigns have found them to be valuable additions to their programmes of studies:

“Thanks to my participation in SYT, I have gained experience and knowledge in many areas, from researching the topic that we wanted to study to analysing the really interesting data we recorded,” said Anna Garcia-Sabaté, who participated in SYT 2012.

“It was a great opportunity for me to improve my mechanical and electrical skills, as well as my organisational skills. The results obtained will be a part of my PhD thesis which focuses on the effects of different gravity levels on the interaction of ultrasounds with fluids. I will probably continue to participate in different gravity-related projects.”

The LDC in action

Teams from ESA Member States and Cooperating States are encouraged to register via the ESA Education Office’s project portal and upload their proposals before 9 December 2013.

The conditions to apply and the eligibility criteria can be found here.

The selection of up to four teams is expected to be announced in February 2014.

Spin Your Thesis! 2013

The ‘Spin Your Thesis!’ 2013 programme is already under way. Teams from the Czech Republic, Italy and Belgium have been selected to participate, and their LDC campaigns will take place from 23 September to 3 October 2013.

Their experiments will examine the behaviour of gliding arcs of plasma in noble gases; the effect of hypergravity on the thermal hydraulic behaviour of a closed-loop pulsating heat pipe; the combined effect of hypergravity and barium titanate nanoparticles on bone-forming stem cells; and the effect of hypergravity on the Leidenfrost point.

Background

The first ‘Spin Your Thesis!’ campaign took place in 2010. Since then, every annual campaign has enabled up to four teams of university students to develop and conduct hypergravity experiments using the Large Diameter Centrifuge facility.

As a direct consequence of the research they conducted during these campaigns, some of the student teams were able to present their results at international conferences and/or publish papers in leading scientific journals.

* ESA Member States in 2013
Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and Canada (Associate Member)
European Cooperating States
Estonia, Hungary, Slovenia, Latvia
Cooperating states
Cyprus, Lithuania, Malta, Slovakia

Asteroids & Comets, In Space Infrastructure, SpaceCasts

“To the Asteroids – and Beyond” – John S. Lewis talk webcast

September 10, 2013 TopSpacer 1 Comment

Long time asteroid mining proponent John S Lewis will give a SETI Institute public talk this evening that will also be available online (7 pm PDT, 10 pm EDT):

Please join us tonight at 7pm for a free public talk at the SETI Institute Headquarters at 189 Bernardo Ave, Mountain View.

If you can’t be at the SETI Institute in person, the talk will be broadcast online and live at the following link: https://plus.google.com/events/cfij418phv10tocljpb2dp56630

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Title:     “To The Asteroids – and beyond!”
Speaker: John Lewis (UAz)
When:      Tonight, 10 September 7pm PDT, 2013
Where:     Colloquium Room, SETI Headquarters, 189 Bernardo Ave, Mountain View
Poster:      http://www.seti.org/sites/default/files/csc-Sep-13.pdf
Live link: https://plus.google.com/events/cfij418phv10tocljpb2dp56630
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Abstract:

Tsiolkovsii and Goddard dreamed of the day when we would have access to the resources of the asteroids. Today, with an enormous and rapidly growing body of data on meteorites, the Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs) and their more distant counterparts, we can envision the propulsion systems, transportation system architectures, ores, processing schemes and markets for products made from materials sourced in nearby space. Most of these products are of greatest value and significance in space; some, such as platinum-group metals and
energy, would be worth returning to Earth.

The resources of the NEAs also provide the propellants and structural materials for a broad expansion of human presence in space.

Dr. John Lewis is the author of the 1997 book “Mining the Sky” and is an Emeritis Professor of Planetary Science at University of Arizona. This talk will survey the what, where, how and why of space resource utilization– and raise the timely question of when.

Update: Here is the talk:

“To the Asteroids – and Beyond” – John S. Lewis talk webcast

Astronomy, Exoplanets, Space participation

Video: Imaging habitable exoplanets + PANOPTES citizen science exoplanet search

September 10, 2013 TopSpacer

Here’s a very interesting SETI Institute seminar by Olivier Guyon about the possibilities of directly imaging planets in the habitable zones of stars by using coronagraph techniques on telescopes to suppress the glare of the star. Could work with a Hubble size telescope in orbit or with the new giant ground based telescopes coming on line in the next decade or so such as the Giant Magellan Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope.

He also spoke about the citizen science program PANOPTES – “Finding exoplanets with digital cameras” – using the transit technique.

Caption:

Olivier Guyon, University of Arizona and Suburu Telescope, HI

Abstract:
Directly imaging exoplanets is both scientifically exciting but notoriously challenging. Scientifically, obtaining images of rocky planets in the habitable zones of stars is key to finding if and how life developed outside the solar system. Large-scale biological activity can modify the chemical composition of the planet’s atmosphere and its surface properties, both of which can be studied by spectrophotometry. The measurement is however extremely challenging, as the planet light is considerably fainter that the host star’s light, and the angular separation between the two objects is about 0.1 arcsecond or less.

Conventional imaging systems cannot overcome the high star to planet contrast, and unusual optics are required for imaging exoplanets. Dr. Guyon will describe such systems (coronagraphs) and the upcoming scientific opportunities associated with their deployment on ground-based telescopes and in space. He will show that ground-based extremely large telescopes (ELTs) will have the ability to directly image and spectroscopically characterize rocky planets in the habitable zones of nearby M-type stars, thus providing scientific evidence for (or against) the presence of life outside our solar system. Space telescopes operating in optical light are well suited to target Earth-like planets around Sun-like stars.

Dr. Guyon will also describe the PANOPTES (Panoptic Astronomical Networked OPtical observatory for Transiting Exoplanet Survey) project, aimed at supporting a world-wide network of small robotic digital cameras built by citizen scientists and schools to identify a large number of transiting exoplanets.