Students get chance to take part in rocket launch

By Catherine Scott The Gateway (University of Alberta)

EDMONTON (CUP) – While most Canadian students are preparing to face another school year, some are also preparing for takeoff.

Four Canadian students chosen from a pool of applicants from the University of Alberta (U of A), the University of Calgary (U of C), and the University of Saskatchewan (U of S) will attend a week-long intensive course offered by Norway’s University of Oslo (U of O) from November 9­13 in sounding rockets and payload instrument design.

They will also launch their own ‘small payloads,’ a term which refers to a sounding rocket that isn’t as big as a full satellite, at the Andoya Rocket Range on an island in northern Norway.

According to David Miles, a U of A graduate student working on his thesis in physics, this hands-on opportunity could serve as the future building blocks for a stronger, highly skilled workforce capable of operating real sounding rockets for million-dollar projects.

Miles has been invited to test a sensor he has devised, training him for future rocket missions. “I think working in space is a fundamentally inspiring thing to do,” Miles said. “The idea here is to provide a stepping stone so we can take students and get them interested in space activities and give them training before they have to work on these very high end, very expensive missions.”

Miles hopes that this course in Norway will evolve from a one-time offer to a 10-year exchange program with Norway, sending some students to Canada to partake in courses not offered at U of O.

The proposed exchange is called CaNoRock (The Canadian-Norway Rocket Exchange) and still needs to be approved and funded.

This year, U of O is funding half of the program with bursaries, and the Canadian Space Agency along with the Institute for Space Science Exploration and Technology (ISSET) at UofA funding the other half.

According to Miles, Canada has historically been a world leader in sounding rockets, especially at U of C.

However, Miles added, Canada has launched only one in the last ten years, and that most of what is launched today is satellites. There aren’t enough satellites orbiting around the Earth to provide sufficient data about space storms and weather, which can affect things like electrical grids, the stability of satellites and the altitude at which it’s safe for airplanes to fly.

One of the goals of this program is to generate interest among students from diverse disciplines to get involved and trained to recommence these rocket missions to find out more.

All three universities are guaranteed at least one spot in the course, and they’re involved in some friendly competition to see which school will fill the fourth spot, according to Melanie Faulknor, Administrative Director for ISSET.

“GPA is the most important thing, but we’re looking for people who have career aspirations in [the field of] space,” Faulknor stated.

Though the course is self-contained, meaning that the University of Oslo will train and give students all the tools they need, Miles added that this sort of work is not for everyone. “You should go expecting to get your hands dirty,” he said.

Share