The 2022 Gravity-Related Experiments Training Week concludes with four university student projects officially starting
In brief
In the past week and a half, 19 university students attended the online training session organized by ESA Academy’s Training and Learning Programme. The four teams of students are now fully prepared for a year-long adventure within their respective “Your Thesis!” programme. They will start building, testing, and performing their proposed experiments on three different gravity altering platforms.
In-depth
Over the past month or so, 4 teams have been selected for some of ESA Academy’s hands-on programmes. More specifically, for the Spin, Drop, and Fly Your Thesis! programmes. The Gravity-Related Experiment Training Week taught the university students everything they need to organize these big projects thus increasing their chances of success. Aside from the educational aspect a lot of focus is put onto the quality of science for their research topics. Like last year, this year's training week was organized and delivered online. Despite this physical separation of trainers and students, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive.
The trainers managed to deliver all the important topics, including project management, risk mitigation, defining requirements, soft skills regarding team building, systems engineering, documentation processes, verification and validation of experiment performance, and communication with stakeholders.
“The training week was very interesting, I learned a lot. Hearing how enthusiastic the lecturers were about the different subjects they presented was an absolute pleasure and very informative as well. My participation this week helped me to further confirm the fact that I would love to end up in the field of space research someday.” said a member of team Hypercropsidants selected for Spin Your Thesis!.
There are no better people to talk about the experience than the people who participated themselves. Therefore, valuable insights and lessons learned were delivered by former participants, who were invited to share their experience with the newly selected student teams. All the teams were also given the opportunity to speak to their assigned engineer from the facilities that operate the gravity altering platforms. Novespace, ZARM and ESA’s Large Diameter Centrifuge staff were all available to discuss the preliminary designs of the experiments and spent hours discussing the best solutions to ensure successful and safe experiment building.
“The training week provided the team with loads of really useful information on things that we might not have considered prior, such as project management and team roles. The best part of the training week was the meetings with the technical staff from Novespace, our discussions let us know what was possible and we were able to formulate a plan for our experiment much more efficiently.” said a PhD student from team SUGAR selected for Fly Your Thesis!.
These sessions were intertwined with lectures from prominent scientists and researchers in the field of gravity-related research briefly giving an overview of physical sciences as well as life sciences. The students were also delivered an inspirational lecture from a Professor of Gravitational Astrophysics and Cosmology at the University of Glasgow who spoke about our knowledge of gravity from the times of Galileo Galilei to Newton and beyond with massive international projects such as LIGO and upcoming programmes such as ESA’s LISA mission.
An experienced ESA astronaut also spoke to the students and took them through a brief history on human presence in space. Central to his message was the importance of teamwork and he conveyed some powerful messages of Earth being strong and resilient, but all life on it being fragile and susceptible.
"The Training Week 2022 has been an enriching experience for team ACOULING. We shared our ideas about the experiment with many experts and they gave us excellent advice on how to proceed. For me, one of the highlights of the week was the opportunity to chat and learn from an ESA Astronaut. It was a very inspiring workshop!" said a student of team ACOULING selected for Drop Your Thesis!.
Nothing is ever straightforward, especially not in developing experiments just like professionals do it. Therefore, each team will encounter different challenges along their route but with the new knowledge bestowed upon them, the students will be able to design, build and test their hardware with greater confidence and success.
If this article made you curious about the projects, you can learn more about the selected teams via the links below:
SYT - Team Hypercropsidants
DYT - Team ACOULING
FYT - Team ERMES
FYT - Team SUGAR