European Space Camp 2008

European Space Camp 2008
or else The sky is not the limit…
by Tomas Pejchal

Tomáš Pejchal

Thursday, 26th June 2008. Andoya Rocket Range, Norway. Time? „T minus one minute and counting!“ Excitement and suspense are growing. The critical moment is coming faster and faster. „Five! Four! Three!“   We can hear the countdown form the loudspeaker. „Two! One!“ All of us are looking at the same place – at the launch pad with a rocket. Our rocket! „Fire!“ One flash and the rocket is climbing towards the clouds...
 There were twenty-six of us. Students from all over the world, interested in science, space, physics and rocket technology. We were chosen and gathered in the north of Norway in order to build and launch a rocket with scientific equipment also constructed by ourselves. Our next aim was to decode, analyse and interpret properly the data transmitted from the rocket and after that to present the results of our scientific work.
The European Space Camp is organised by Norwegian Association of Young Scientists and National Centre for Space Related Education in cooperation with Norwegian Space Centre and European Space Agency (ESA).

The main aim of the Space Camp is to provide the chosen students with the opportunity to experience the scientific work in real conditions, with high-quality equipment and in an international team. All of that with a guidance and supervision of top European scientists and experts.
 We were divided into five groups, each of which had a different task to do:
      A – Rocket System Design
      B – Experimental Instrumentation
      C – Rocket Payload Assembly
      D – Rocket Telemetry
      E – Rocket Physics
The groups had to cooperate with each other, solve the problems which occurred, coordinate all the work. I was a member of Group B. We were in charge of constructing the sensors for the rocket (that means sensors for measuring temperature, pressure, acceleration, humidity and magnetic field). Further, we had to make up the equations for converting the binary signal from the rocket to understandable scientific data.
Besides all this “manual work”, the week at Space Camp was also filled with interesting lectures, e.g. about the solar wind, auroras, rocket construction, the new accelerator LHC in CERN and many others.
But man does not live on science alone, neither do the Spacecampers! The second part of the Space Camp motto (the first one is in the headline) namely is:  „ ... it’s where the fun begins!” To prove that, we started every day with a warm-up on the shore of the ocean and during the day, we were doing really interesting and entertaining activities prepared by the organizers. But what we enjoyed most was so called “midnight swim” – approximately at midnight you wear the swimsuit, go outside and together with the others, screaming and yelling, run into the freezing ocean! All of that in the shine of the midnight sun...

During the whole week at Space Camp, there was amazing and friendly atmosphere and we became one compact team. And this team finally accomplished its mission – launched the rocket into the height of ten kilometres, obtained and processed the data and also had a lot of fun.
The Space Camp 2008 was an unforgettable experience for me. I learned “how the science is being done”, experienced the significance of cooperation and made deep friendships that, I hope, will last even after we came back to our homes.