New Fly a Rocket! opportunity for university students

The Fly a Rocket! programme is offered under a collaboration between the ESA Education office, Andøya Space Education, and the Norwegian Space Agency (Norsk Romsenter). It gives university students at bachelor level an opportunity to learn about rocketry and to participate in a launch campaign for a student rocket.  

Successful applicants will first participate in an online course. To allow students to fit this into their university schedules, two courses with identical content are offered. A detailed schedule can be seen here. 

Each iteration of the online course will have up to 50 students participating. The online course covers the necessary theoretical background for the rocket campaign – both from an engineering and scientific perspective. Participants will be given access to an online portal where they can access material for self-study. Topics covered include among others rocket dynamics, atmospheric physics, soldering, and telemetry. At the end of their online course, students will have to complete an assignment. 

After the conclusion of the online courses, the most outstanding 24 students will be invited to attend a rocket launch campaign, a week filled with additional training and hands-on work. The participants will have the chance to work on flight simulations, the Andøya Space Education telemetry station, the rocket’s payload section or several analogue and digital sensors. They build, test, and finally launch their own sounding rocket. During the campaign, students work in close collaboration with experts from Andøya Space and take over typical tasks of personnel involved in sounding rocket launch campaigns. 

The unique opportunity is aimed at bachelor level students early in their studies and will give them an introduction into space science and technology, with an aim to ‘fill the gap’ between secondary school activities and more advanced opportunities such as the ESA Academy Experiments programme, REXUS/BEXUS or Fly Your Satellite!. It’s hoped that participation in Fly a Rocket! will elevate participants understanding and appreciation for the space industry and encourage them to pursue further opportunities within their studies or careers related to space. 

While an understanding of some higher-level mathematics is required, candidates need not necessarily be studying aerospace engineering or science. The Fly a Rocket! programme is designed to show that careers in the space sector do not necessarily require a technical or mathematical background. 

To this end, ESA is happy to accept applications from students studying, for example, education, media, and management, as well as the traditional maths, physics, and engineering subjects. However, candidates should show and demonstrate a strong interest in the space industry, space science or technology. 

To apply, read more about the programme on our website and fill in the application form. The closing date for applications is the 3rd December 2023, 23:59 CET. 

For the participation in the online course, applications are judged on the relevance of the programme to the applicant’s education and ambitions, suggestions for promotional activities relating to the programme and/or ‘space’, and a concept for a hypothetical sounding rocket payload. 

Applications and the performance in the online course assignments are combined to select the students who are invited to participate in the hands-on launch campaign. 

Notes: 

For more information, applicants can contact flyarocket @ esa.int. 

Launch campaign participants will have costs (i.e. travel, accommodation, participation in the campaign) covered by the organisers. Travel costs will be reimbursed in accordance with the ESA Education sponsorship criteria.