BEXUS 10 launch

The first flight of the 2010 Balloon Experiments for University Students (BEXUS 10) campaign was completed successfully on 10 October. The second flight, BEXUS 11, is rescheduled to take place during November.

The BEXUS 10 and 11 programme began on 1 October, when students from seven European universities arrived at the Esrange launch site in Sweden, north of the Arctic Circle. Over the next two days, the student teams prepared their experiments and integrated them onto the balloon gondolas. Although the payloads were ready to fly, bad weather intervened, causing both flights to be postponed.

BEXUS 10 eventually lifted off at 03:07 EST on 9 October, carrying three experiments sponsored by ESA’s Education Office and the Swedish National Space Board. The balloon rose to an altitude of 22.5 km and stayed aloft for just over 3 hours before landing close to the Finnish border.

Despite some damage caused by trees during the final descent, the experiments were delivered safely to the ground. The next day, the gondola was returned to Esrange just in time for the students to check their experiments before the scheduled departure from Kiruna.

Student experiments

The three ESA-sponsored experiments on BEXUS 10 were:

CASS-E (Cranfield Astrobiological Stratospheric Sampling Experiment) – Cranfield University, United Kingdom. The instrument was designed to collect and detect microorganisms in the stratosphere in order to understand how such microbes are transported from one area to another. Many of the systems operated well, but unfortunately the bio-barriers did not open so no samples were collected. The team will perform a full failure analysis over the coming weeks with a view to a possible reflight.

I-BATE (ISU Balloon Air Traffic Control Experiment) – International Space University, Strasbourg, France. The goal of the experiment was to provide proof of concept for Air Traffic Control from Space using Automatic-Dependent Surveillance (ADS-B) beacons broadcast by civilian aircraft. The night-time flight was not ideal, as there were few planes to track, but the experiment performed well and a total of 14 aircraft was tracked, with a maximum of 6 simultaneously. This was not enough to test the saturation level of the detector, but the team received some good data to analyse.

SCRAT (Spherical Compact Rechargeable Air Thruster) – University of Padova, Italy. This low-thrust cold gas actuator was designed to use as propellant the air collected by a compressor from the surrounding atmosphere. The experiment operated nominally throughout the flight and the team was very happy with the preliminary results. Further analysis will allow the team to evaluate the thruster’s performance.