REXUS BEXUS - A Swedish-German co-operation for university student experiments on rockets and balloons

Abstract

In June 2007 the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the Swedish National Space Board signed an agreement to jointly provide flight opportunities for university students to fly experiments on suborbital rockets and stratospheric balloons during a five year period. The implementation of this unique student programme is handled by EuroLaunch, which is a co-operation between the Mobile Rocket Base (MORABA) of DLR and the Swedish Space Corporation. Students from all ESA member states are eligible to apply to this programme, named REXUS (rockets) and BEXUS (balloons). The student programme involves two suborbital rocket missions and two stratospheric balloon flights per year. All flights are performed from the Esrange Space Center in Sweden. The REXUS is an unguided, spin-stabilised, solid propellant, single stage rocket. The BEXUS balloon has a volume of 12,000 m3 and a diameter of 25 m at floating altitude. The programme builds on experience of previous student missions where the best practices for how to carry out this kind of programme has been learnt. It involves students in all phases of a real space programme, from proposal through selection, design, reviews, construction, testing, flight campaign, and ending with data analysis and presentation of results. The students participate in a one week long Student Training Week, during which they learn about the space environment, best practices for design and assembly, integration and testing of space equipment, interfacing to power and telemetry and command links, and lessons learned from earlier students. A historical resume of previous flight opportunities for university students at Esrange and the current guidelines and procedures for REXUS and BEXUS flight opportunities involving DLR as well as the ESA Education office will be presented. The REXUS/BEXUS programme gives students the opportunity to efficiently build on the experience of today’s professional space engineers, and to obtain a flying start on their career.