Alpbach2008

Summer School Alpbach 2008

Abstract
The first unofficial welcome was done during the 21.7 evening in Summer School building. Not only students had the first opportunity to meet new colleagues for the next two weeks. During the morning of the Summer School first day we made registration and we found out our team a received final program. Organizers haven’t spared even a minute and we watched the first presentation. Our program was full of interesting lectures which helped us with our project. Each team had his own mission to achieve. To get full overview of the project complexity we had mainly presentations, but after few days we spared more and more time in our lab working on the mission. Even the presentations were mainly focused on scientific and technical approaches we had the honor to listen to David Southwood, chief of ESA for scientific programs. This Summer School gave to its students
a great overview on ESA projects and practical experience with space missions.

Day by day
After the first day we had idea why it is important to sample on Moon, asteroids or comets. From my point of view was more interesting the second day, when we started to plan our mission. Our ideas started with presentation of Patric Michel about Hayabusa mission. He introduced troubles and clever ideas to overcome problems. During every evening diner one member from the each team had to present new things that we worked on.
Presentations were made mainly with scientific approach to the space missions. Technological part of the mission was suppressed to an elementary level. To get deeper in this field we had books to study in library. We worked hard even after the diner we prepared our project long into the night.
We had also a fun. We had fine time during diners. We made very nice hike on Saturday. Countryside around Alpbach is marvelous. With fresh air came also fresh ideas and we could go one with our project.
I found slight change in the content of the second week presentations. Lecturers talked more about their projects and we made long discussion with them after the presentation. We tried to get inspired with their work.
We were divided into four teams. After democratic vote my team chose to sample asteroid. Our plan was quite ambitious. We wanted to do flyby with remote sensing of Q asteroid and sample from V type. We had science part and technical part. I made project design of computer system, navigation and guidance system and power source calculations. Sampling itself was so challenging that I worked also on new type of drilling device. The great thing was that worked on different topics and I found inspiration in work of my colleagues.
The last day was about team presentations. Each team had two delegates for final presentations. Usually it was one man for science and one man for technology. After that the jury discussed the project with the whole team.
During the closing ceremonial we received certificates and hints what we made good and what we could improve in our future work. This course was a great challenge for our minds and big experience for our life.

Michal Kubínyi
researcher & postgradual student