REXUS BEXUS - A Swedish-German co-operation for university student experiments on rockets and balloons
2008
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.
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