U of A students blast off in Norway

Data collection was a priority for the crew of postsecondary students assigned to repurpose an ex-military rocket with sensory equipment for the program

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FIRE YOUR ENGINES Huber stands near the modified military rocket in Norway.

Two University of Alberta students had the opportunity to build and launch a rocket at the Andoya Rocket Range in Norway last week.

The course is a pilot project put on by the University of Oslo, and the Institute for Space, Science, Exploration, and Technology.

About 20 students attended the program, including four Canadian undergraduates: one from the U of A, one from the University of Calgary, and two from the University of Saskatchewan. The other students that attended were from the U of O and the University of Tromsø in Norway.

James Huber, a third-year undergraduate in mechanical engineering, was selected to fill the U of A’s spot. David Miles, a master’s student in space physics, was invited to go to on the trip in order to test his thesis project, a miniature magnetic field sensor.

The rocket itself was actually a re-purposed military missile given to Andoya to use for educational purposes. The students were split into groups and each group was responsible for a specific aspect of the rocket, such as instruments, telemetry, and the rocket itself.

Throughout the week, the students attended lectures and built instruments before actually launching it on the second-last day.

“It was really interesting because they handled it like a professional, scientific rocket launch even though this is just a small, educational rocket. I think our countdown was an hour and we ran through a whole bunch of checks during that hour,” Huber said.

The launch ran fairly smoothly, with only one hold in the countdown: some expensive ranging equipment failed to work, and the students had to gather their data using an older method.

“There’s a big paper wheel, a scrolling thing of paper with a pen going up and down. And if everything else goes wrong, you at least have this pen going up and down to tell you how far away the rocket is at any particular time,” Miles said. “[Researchers] understand that equipment crashes, things break and you have to launch anyways.”

Collecting data is the biggest part of a rocket launch, and Miles said that learning how data is collected is not something that Canadian students can readily experience.

“We have a very strong theoretical working group here, but in terms of getting instruction on how you would actually go and get this data, it’s not something that we are particularly strong in right now,” Miles said.

Huber said that for him, seeing where the data actually comes from makes the field of space exploration more real.

“It really made it concrete to actually be there, being taught by an actual rocket scientist, so it’s encouraging. It shows it’s something that just a regular guy like myself can get into,” Huber said.

Miles said that the opportunity for students to get experience outside of the classroom is something that they should take advantage of.

“Science is supposed to be bringing people together, and all of a sudden we’re actually achieving that. This is part of a whole construct for trying to manufacture opportunities for students to get involved so that by the time you finish your university career, you’re ready to do this for real,” Miles stated.

Melanie Faulknor of ISSET said that the program is something they’re hoping to expand on in future years after the success of this trip.

“We were so excited for them to go and we’re so excited for things like this in the future. This is the type of thing that ISSET wants to do more of, so CaNoRock was a really big thing for us.”