The Selection Workshop

From November 30 to December 2 five of the RAIN team members travelled down to Noordwijk in the Netherlands to participate in the REXUS/BEXUS 2011/2012 selection workshop, hosted by the European Space Agency (ESA) at the European Space Technology and Research Centre (ESTEC).

At the Selection Workshop Peggy, Kristoffer, Valeriy, Patrick and Will gave a 20 minute presentation outlining our scientific objectives, our preliminary experiment design and our initial project plan to a panel of experts from the ESA. The selection panel then got the opportunity to ask questions about the proposal and give constructive criticism.

The general consensus from the selection panel was that our experiment presented a collection of ‘brilliant’ ideas, however the design was too complicated. The selection panel was of the opinion that we should reduce the number of probes we were using from eight to a maximum of four. They suggested that we should re-think our scientific objectives and focus on a single objective, preferably the aerosol particle collection.

Even though we received a lot of criticism, we believe that our presentation was impressive and that we had made a good start to the project. We felt like we were in a good position, having developed a detailed experiment idea that was already a step ahead of where we should have been for the selection workshop.

For the rest of the time we were at ESTEC we watched other team’s presentations and went on a tour around the facility. The tour around the space center was a fantastic experience. We got to see some of the giant satellite testing chambers that expose future spacecraft to extreme conditions such as those that would be seen in the space environment and during launch. These facilities included some of the largest shaker tables in the world, an acoustic noise chamber, a vacuum chamber complete with a high intensity set of lights to simulate the sun and a communications simulation room complete with spiky walls used for noise absorption. Along with the testing facilities we toured the European centre for the International Space Station (ISS). This centre included exhibits on the different methods in which ESA performs microgravity experiments. The centrepiece was a life size model of the European Columbus laboratory, Europe’s main contribution to the ISS.

The RAIN team in from a model Soyuz rocket.

The RAIN team hard at work in the presentation room.

Initial Design

The first step was determining what we actually wanted to do with the rocket experiment. Our two PhD students, Peggy and Kristoffer, from the Department of Meteorology at Stockholm University were interested in both density profiles and aerosol dust particle profiles of the middle atmosphere. Given these interests we set out to design an experiment that could take measurements to capture these profiles.

We ended up with an experiment that carried eight probes that would be deployed from the nosecone of the REXUS rocket. These probes would have ejected at the apogee of the rocket at roughly 90km and would have then fallen back to Earth collecting data.

We planned to use four probes to collect aerosol dust particles using rotating turntable devices fitted with aerogel or glass fibre collection materials. As the probes fell at high speeds we planned to collide the probes with any particles present. At roughly six kilometre the probes were to inflate a spherical inflatable structure that would slow the probe to a safe landing velocity.

The four other probes were to be used for to gather multi-point density and temperature profiles. These probes would have inflated their spherical drag devices at apogee. As the probe fell, a GPS front end would have taken measurements of how fast the probe was falling. Using the coefficient of drag of the spherical probe in combination with the velocity of the probe we would have been able to calculate the density of the atmosphere.