Student Training Week

at DLR Oberpfaffenhofen , from 9th to 13th February 2015

The first milestone of our project was the Student Training Week. At the DLR Campus at Oberpfaffenhofen we met the REXUS / BEXUS teams from all over Europe.
Together we attended several lectures about the aspects of REXUS / BEXUS experiments. They were given by experts from the different institutes that are part of the programme.
Furthermore we had our Preliminary Design Review.

LTR: Florian Kunzi, Liviu Stamat, Bastian Klein, Moritz Aicher, Jonas Ehnle, Dominik Wagner, Elke Heidmann

During the week we had lectures and workshops covering all aspects that are important for a REXUS experiment. From requirements and their verification continuing with mechanics, technical drawings, thermal, electrical and software design to first information on the campaign we got very helpful ideas what to consider within the design and implementation process.

Besides the lectures we also hat some guided tours at the DLR Campus. We visited the Columbus Control Center which is the control room for the European part of the ISS.
Another tour was about robotics at DLR when we saw some humanoid robots as well as autonomous planes and helicopters.

Apart from all space technology we also enjoyed to meet the other teams of the REXUS / BEXUS programme and the visit of Andechs Monastery on Monday evening when we saw the baroque church and learned about Bavarian food and beer culture.

On Thursday we finally had our Preliminary Design Review. First we had to present what we had done and planed so far about our experiment. Then we had an hour of discussion with the board of experts. They gave us much helpful advice on our experiment. One expert reminded us, that we will have to write “tons of software”.

The closing event of the week took place at Oberschleissheim Airfield what is part of the German Museum. First we listened to a speech of Frank Wukasch about OTRAG, the first private German rocket company. Later we had dinner at the museum right among the planes and spent the evening visiting the museum.

The Student Training Week was very helpful for the next phase of our design progress. Currently the first lines of flight software are written and some parts are ordered to start testing them soon.