Category: educational programmes

3, 2, 1, … Ready for Take-Off!

28. November 2021 / Greta / 0 Comments

Launch Campaign in Esrange as the Highlight of the REXUS/BEXUS Programme

“There is no comfortable path that leads from the earth to the stars”, this was already known by the Roman philosopher and naturalist Lucius Annaeus Seneca (ca. 4 BC – 65 AD), also known as Seneca the Younger.

For our journey to the stars, we have been working towards this event for almost two years with our FORAREX project: The Launch Campaign at the European Space and Sounding Rocket Range (Esrange) at the civilian balloon and rocket launch site near Kiruna in northern Sweden. It is the highlight of the German-Swedish student programme REXUS/BEXUS, which we have already presented here on the Science Blog.

Kiruna – All Fired up for an Icy Adventure

28. November 2021 / Greta / 2 Comments

by Christoph Kulmann and Greta Sondej

Long anticipated and eagerly awaited, our student training week starts in snowy Lapland near Sweden’s northernmost city: Kiruna (from the North Sami “giron”, meaning “snow grouse”).

Bremen Airport is already getting us in the mood for the weather that awaits us in Lapland…

REXUS/BEXUS – Experiments Soar Into Space!

28. November 2021 / Greta / 0 Comments

An European Education Programme Empowers Students to Develop Their own Space Mission

by Greta Sondej and Christoph Kulmann

In our last article, we told you about our FORAREX project, which we developed within the framework of the German-Swedish REXUS/BEXUS programme.

But what exactly does this REXUS/BEXUS programme entail? And who can participate?

FORAREX – Astronaut in Miniature Form

28. November 2021 / Greta / 0 Comments

How a Single-Celled Organism Finds its Way From the Sea Into Outer Space

by Team FORAREX

Imagine you are living under the sea. You see the suns rays shining through the water. There is sand beneath you. The water flows around you to the rhythm of the wave – and you sway with it (see Fig. 1). Everything feels very pleasant. You are thinking how wonderful your home is. The waves, the light – everything is perfect.

But suddenly a dark shadow looms over you – and this shadow takes you out of this paradise and catapults you into space! Isn’t that a disturbing and rather improbable idea?

But that is in fact my story.

Foraminifera – A Hard Shell With a Soft Core

28. November 2021 / Greta / 0 Comments

by Christoph Kulmann and Greta Sondej

Foraminifera (Latin for “hole bearers”, informally called “forams”) are single-celled organisms that usually have a multi-chambered shell, which can be built in various ways depending on the species. They are the stars of the FORAREX (FORAminifera Rocket EXperiment) project, in which we investigate their behaviour and shell growth under microgravitational conditions.

How we can become spiderman

27. May 2021 / Katharina / 0 Comments

by Manuel Vollbrecht

Figure 1: Running up walls and jumping over roofs like Spiderman for once…. ¹

Every single person has probably imagined once what life as a superhero with special skills would be like. Of course, we all know that most of the skills that actually define superheroes are supernatural and (unfortunately) come entirely from the imaginations of the authors and filmmakers.

The Story of Giant Libraries Made of Ice

9. March 2021 / Hanna Sophie / 2 Comments

About Ice Cores Part I

by Hanna Sophie Knahl

A transforming icy library slowly descending towards the valley. Glacier in the northeast of Greenland. Photo: Jan Rohde

On earth there is a lot of ice and snow and not only in winter – at least at the moment. At the poles there are huge sheets of ice and in between exist many smaller and larger glaciers on high mountains. Stories are preserved in the ice. Stories from long ago. How this happened and how these stories can be brought to the surface, we will learn in this article.