Drop Your Thesis! 2017 campaign concludes
This year, right of access to the world-class ZARM drop tower facility in Bremen was granted to two university student teams from TU Delft and from the University of Seville, as part of the two weeks long Drop Your Thesis! 2017 campaign. Each team spent the first week at ZARM integrating their experiments in a special capsule and the following week launching or dropping their capsules in the 146m high tower.
The teams were originally selected right before the beginning of 2017 and, as part of their experiment development, spent one week in January 2017 in ESEC, Redu, Belgium, to receive the basic training from ZARM and ESA personnel, to learn how to manage their project in the best way possible. The remainder of the year, the teams spent much time developing the hardware and testing it in their respective laboratories.
The Ferros team aimed to collect data to validate their CFD model of ferrofluid behaviour in magnetic field in microgravity, whilst the GrapheneX team investigated the possible use of graphene as a material for a solar sail.
As in every Drop Your Thesis campaign, the ZARM engineers supported the students with excellent service and helped them with their extraordinary experience in drop tower tests, to best achieve their experimental objectives. Hopefully, the work of this whole year will lead to papers and further experimentation in the near future for both teams.
The team members all agreed that the programme was a fantastic experience. “This was the most memorable experience I have had while doing science. It was a very gratifying extraordinary experience, that we could achieve in a fun and relaxing professional environment,” said Santiago Cartamil Bueno, team leader of the GrapheneX team from TU Delft.
ESA Education is currently evaluating the proposals for next year’s Drop Your Thesis campaign, which will run from the 12th to the 23rd November 2018. The winner of the selection will be announced soon on our web pages.