Outreach Experiments: From FOTON M-1 to the ISS
- Paper number
IAC-05-E1.1.04
- Author
Mr. Iñaki Rodriguez Rebolledo, HE Space Operations, The Netherlands
- Year
2005
- Abstract
Following the hugely successful Parabolic Flight campaign of 2001, the ESA Education Office gave three of those participating student teams the opportunity to take part on a real space mission, where they would be able to carry out their tests on longer and better microgravity conditions than what Parabolic Flights can offer. For the first time ESA offered 7 Kg of payload to students on a FOTON Russian recoverable satellite, which conducts different experiments in weightlessness providing them with microgravity levels better than 10-5 g during its whole flight duration of 16 days. The European Space Agency has been using these satellites since 1987 for its scientific experiments as an alternative to the International Space Station. The three selected teams of students came from the University of York (England, UK), the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (Switzerland) and the University of Edinburgh (Scotland, UK). They worked during a whole year on the preparation of their experiments, Floatin´ Protein, Chondro and Winograd, respectively to be flown in FOTON M-1. After passing all the safety and acceptance tests, the three student experiments were successfully integrated and switched on in the satellite and FOTON M-1 was launched on 15th of October 2002 from Kosmodrome Plesetsk in Russia. Unfortunately, one of the side-boosters of the Soyuz-U launcher failed 29 seconds after lift-off and the rocket fell back to the ground, exploding in a big ball of fire and destroying the satellite with the whole payload. Far from giving up in their attempt to reach the space, the three student teams have accepted the challenge of rebuilding their experiments. Two of them (Winograd and Chondro) were given the choice to fly to the International Space Station as part of ESA’s Cervantes Mission. The hardware was re-built and validated in order to meet the strict requirements for a manned mission. The two experiments were launched on Progress and Soyuz and brought back by ESA astronaut Pedro Duque. The results obtained are currently being analysed and studied by the students at their home universities.
- Abstract document