• Welcome
• Introduction
• Parabolic Flights
  • Student Campaigns
  • Flight Manoeuvre
• The Team
• The Project
• The Experiment
• Project History
• Photos
• Movies
• Downloads

Note: It seems that ESA is not longer providing student campaigns. But students have the possibility to fly there thesis.

Student Parabolic Flight Campaigns

Following the great success of the Student Parabolic Flight Campaigns that it organised in 1994 and 1995, ESA decided to turn them into an annual event for students from the Agency’s Member and Cooperating States. An initiative of ESA’s Education Office - now ESA's Education Department - the campaigns give students a unique opportunity to experience weightlessness whilst performing their own scientific experiments, and hopefully encourage them to consider pursuing a career in space.

Every year 120 students are given the opportunity to take part in ESA's Student Parabolic Flight Campaign (SPFC). 30 experiments are selected to fly in each campaign, where each experiment is designed and built by a team of 4 students. Each experiment flies twice, accompanied by 2 students at a time.

The campaign usual takes place in Bordeaux (France) where the aircraft is based and the student teams stay there for one and a half weeks. During the first week, the experiments undergo ground testing and safety checks before the installation onboard the aircraft. The following week, the students take place onboard the A300 Zero G for the in-flight testing of their experiment.

After the campaign, the 2 most promising experiments are selected to re-fly on ESA's Parabolic Flight Research Campaigns.

Text excerpt from www.estec.esa.nl, dated 2003.