Experimenting in microgravity: IUB teams participated in ESA’s Student Parabolic Flight Campaign

Research under microgravity conditions usually remains a dream for most students. This dream recently came true for seven second year IUB students who where chosen to participate in the 2006 Student Parabolic Flight Campaign organized by the European Space Agency (ESA) in Bordeaux, France. They formed two of the 30 international teams that were invited to carry out scientific experiments on board of a special jet during the first week of September. The IUB students’ projects had been selected from about 100 proposals, with scientific value, technical complexity and project management being the main selection criteria.

[ Sep 20, 2006]  The ESA campaign is designed to offer talented students from all ESA member states the opportunity to perform their own practical experiments regarding physical, biological or chemical phenomena in microgravity. The parabolic flights last about three hours each and are realized in cooperation with ESA’s partner Novespace using an Airbus-300 Zero-G. About 30 parabolas are flown per flight. Every parabola includes a climb flight phase of increased gravity which is followed by a free fall, generating about 20 seconds of microgravity conditions. Thus the students only had about 10 minutes on each of the two flights they attended to perform their experiments – completely on their own.

The IUB team “NEPTUNAS” consisted of the Geosciences and Astrophysics students Simona Balan from Romania, and the Germans Eva Stüeken, Matteo Kausch, and Wilken-Jon von Appen, all aged 21. The teams’ objective was to measure the photosynthetic yield of two species of microalgae from both, fresh and salt water, under micro and hypergravity conditions, and to compare the results with those under normal gravity. The experiment’s results might be of interest to space industry as microalgae are being considered to be used as oxygen and food sources on long manned spaceflights. During the design of their experiment the team was mainly tutored by Joachim Vogt, IUB Professor of Physics. The “NEPTUNAS received further support” from Laurenz Thomsen, IUB Professor of Geosciences, and Claudia Thomsen, Research Associate (Oceanography).

The second team, named “LEDA”, was composed of the Romanian IUB Students Ciprian Gal, a 21-year-old Physics student, Dan Andrei Costea and Adrian Costache, both aged 20 and students of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Flaviu Valentin Barsan, a 20-year-old Engineering student form the University of Calgary, which collaborates with ESA. They investigated how bubbles, which stick to submerged heating devices under microgravity conditions and thus may block the heat transfer, can be removed with the help of ultrasound waves. The experiment’s results might help to increase the performance of such devices and prevent possible burnouts of the heating elements. Moreover, one of the group’s sponsors from a rocket fuel company is interested in possibilities to remove of bubbles from inside fuel tanks.

Both teams have recorded a lot of data and will start to analyze it, as soon as all the ESA flight information is available. Team “LEDA” hopes their results will be available in November to present them to the ESA in the Netherlands.