ESA Fly Your Thesis! 2017 Call for Proposals

ESA Education is inviting university student teams to submit proposals related to designing, building and flying their experiment in a parabolic flight campaign, which is tentatively scheduled to take place in autumn 2017.
STATUS: OPEN. ESA Education is currently accepting proposals.

DEADLINE: 16 May 2016 23:59pm CET.

Teams interested in participating in the Fly your Thesis! 2017 programme should submit an accurately completed Experiment Proposal document detailing the description of the experiments that they intend to perform. Experiments are required to be a key part of master or PhD theses, and the subject of the experiments investigations must require availability of microgravity conditions.

ESA will select up to 15 teams to proceed through to the next round. The selection will be solely based on eligibility criteria of the teams, the microgravity relevance, the quality of the proposal, the educational return (based i.a., on the number of students involved,on the relevance of the experiment for Master or PhD graduation theses of one or more team members, as well as on the scientific merit detailed in the Experiment Proposal).

The minimum number of students to be actively involved in each student team is 4, however an active involvement of more students is desirable. The proposals shall also clarify how the student teams intend to cope with a possible turn-over, in order to replace team members who might decide to leave the project.

The shortlisted teams will be given a few weeks to complete a first draft of their Experiment Safety Data Package (ESDP, a technical document required from all teams that participate in ESA Parabolic Flight Campaigns), and will then be invited to a selection workshop at ESA/ESTEC to present their experiment proposals to a Review Board composed of ESA Education representatives, ESA’s Human and Robotic Exploration Directorate representatives, Novespace staff and members of the European Low Gravity Research Association (ELGRA). After this workshop, the Review Board will select up to four teams candidate to fly on a parabolic flight campaign tentatively scheduled in late 2017.

It should be noted that, at the present time, the opportunity for student teams to access the parabolic flight campaign is not yet confirmed, and this Call for Proposals is released in anticipation of the confirmation on the execution of the campaign. The aim is to complete the selection of the student experiments by the time the parabolic flight campaign is confirmed.

Typically, in order to execute the experiments on board parabolic flight campaigns, the students accompany their set-ups on three flights of 30 parabolas each. During each parabola, they will experience about 20 seconds of microgravity. Normally the flights are performed by a specially equipped Airbus A310 Zero-G aircraft operated by Novespace.

All selected teams will be supported by the ESA Education Office, ESA and Novespace microgravity experts. The teams will also be offered mentoring by a member of the European Low Gravity Research Association (ELGRA) to help further develop their investigations. The ESA Education Office will provide financial support to cover part of the cost of the experiment hardware, necessary travel and accommodation.

Interested teams should carefully read all the information given on this website prior to registering on ESA Education Office’s Projects Portal.