CEPSAR PhD students are really important to the vibrance of CEPSAR and we proudly celebrate their successes in all aspects of their PhD studies. The frequency by which we are able to congratulate our students on awards, bursaries, publications, for example, is testament to
More Success For CEPSAR Student
Second year CEPSAR PhD student Lucy Greenwood has been awarded the Peer Prize for her poster ‘Giant Backward Folds: North-West directed backfolds found in the Eastern Himalaya’, which she presented at the British Geological Survey University Funding Initiative (BUFI) Science Festival. The festival provided an opportunity for all PhD students funded by the BUFI scheme to showcase their research by presenting a poster and accompanying press release. These had to impress a range of judges, from administrative staff to scientific experts
30th March 2011
CEPSAR Student Awarded Bursary
A Postgraduate student bursary of £400 has been awarded to second year CEPSAR PhD student Lucy Greenwood by The Mineralogical Society. The bursary will be used to help cover travel costs for Lucy to attend the Himalayan-Karakoram-Tibetan Workshop to be held in Canmore, Canada in July. This workshop will bring together geologists from China, Nepal, India and Bhutan, as well as America and Europe. Lucy will present recent findings from her study of mountain building processes in the Eastern Himalaya, including new geochronological data from her work at the NERC Isotope Geoscience Laboratory (NIGL). She will also attend a field excursion through the Rocky Mountains.
29th March 2011
Oldest Dated Material From Amazon Cloud Forest Establishes Climate And Biodiversity Link
Research led by CEPSAR member Macarena Cárdenas examines the oldest material ever recovered from the cloud forest in western Amazonia– in a biodiversity hotspot – to be accurately dated. The material is so old that it predates the arrival of humans in South America, so Cárdenas and her colleagues knew they were seeing the impact of natural climate change when they established a link between past global temperature variation and biodiversity change.
Another CEPSAR member Dr William Gosling, Lecturer at The Open University and Cárdenas’s PhD supervisor said: “This study provides the first ever insight into how Amazonian vegetation responded to massive climate changes in the Middle Pleistocene period, hundreds of thousands of years ago. The material pre-dates the arrival of humans in South America so can be considered ‘natural’. It has provided scientific evidence relevant to climatologists, ecologists, evolutionary biologists, policymakers and indeed anyone with an appreciation of wildlife: with global warming we can expect to see dramatic changes in life on Earth.”
The research is published today by the journal Science.
25th February 2011
CEPSAR Student Wins Award
Third year CEPSAR PhD student Sam Harrison has been selected for the competitive Lunar and Planetary Institute Career Development Award, receiving $1200 funding to attend the 42nd Lunar & Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas in March 2011. LPSC is the foremost international planetary science conference and offers her the opportunity to present her recent research and develop networking skills.
Sam’s PhD research concerns the origin and evolution of an enigmatic region of Mars called the Medusae Fossae Formation. This geological assemblage, covering nearly a quarter of Mars’s equatorial zone, is typified by friable, fine-grained deposits and distinctive wind-erosion features; it’s origin is unknown. Sam’s recent work has concentrated on an unusual network of channels in the central lobe of the formation and her conclusion is flowing liquid water created this feature. She will present her work at LPSC in a poster entitled “Observation and interpretation of an inverted channel feature in the middle member of the Medusae Fossae Formation, Equatorial Mars”.
11th February 2011
New CEPSAR Publication
The contribution of crustal anatexis to the tectonic evolution of Indian crust beneath southern Tibet.
A significant advance in our understanding of how and why continental crust melts has been published in the January issue of the Bulletin of the Geological Society of America.
Research in southern Tibet over the past 20 years by CEPSAR geoscientists has succeeded in linking thermomechanical models for the evolution of colliding continents with empirical structural and geochemical evidence for crustal melting. Early granites, dated between 28 and 23 Ma, have weakened the lower crust, triggering ductile flow squeezed southwards by high pressures at depth caused by the thickened Tibetan crust. Later granite plutons, dated between 15 and 9 Ma, were emplaced during uplift of thickened crust to shallow levels. The early granites mark the growth of the Himalaya by crustal thickening. The later granites reflect the development of the plateau by uplift and extension in southern Tibet. The paper proposes a mechanism for this tectonic change, whereby flexural uplift of Indian collisional crust and sustained uplift in southern Tibet is a response to steepening of the Indian subducting slab during ongoing collision of India and Asia between 23 Ma and 15 Ma.
King, J., Harris, N., Argles, T., Parrish, R. and Zhang, H.F., 2011.
Geological Society of America Bulletin, 123, 218-239.
6th January 2011
Open University Visiting Student Wins Slovakian Award As Best National Student in Mathematics and Physics 2010
Gabriel Horvath, a visiting researcher to the Department of Physics and Astronomy at The Open University since 2007 (where he works with Professor Nigel Mason), has been named as best research student in Mathematics and Physics in Slovakia, 2010 for his research in laboratory studies of Titan’s atmosphere.
The Junior Chamber International – Slovakia (JCI-Slovakia) traditionally organizes a national competition in the late autumn named “Student personality of Slovakia”. The aim of the contest is to highlight young Slovak researchers, their talent and successes.
This year's finalists were announced on Tuesday 7 December in the Palffy palace in Bratislava, the Slovak Capital. The gala award ceremony was held under the auspices of the President of Slovakia, Ivan Gasparovic, with the support of the chair of Slovak chancellor conference Prof. Jaromir Pastorek and its vice-chair Prof. Daniela Ježová; the president of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAS), Prof. Libor Vozár and its vice - president Prof. Rudolf Sivák with many other leading members of Slovakia’s academic and business spheres.
At the presentation ceremony the Chief Executive of JCI-Slovakia, Marian Meško stated that JCI was an organisation with an international focus and remarked that in this contest any bachelor, master or PhD student between 18 and 35, who produced extraordinary results in his/her research area during the given year could be nominated by the universities or research cenrers in the Slovak Republic where the nominated student currently studies.
Gabriel Horvath won the 2010 prize in the Mathematics and physics category.
Gabriel finished his master degree in the Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics in Bratislava in 2007 and has continued his PhD studies in the Department of Experimental Physics. His specification is plasma physics and he now is completing his PhD theses entitled "Simulation of Titan's atmosphere in electrical discharges". Gabriel's research areas are: spectral analysis of discharges, study of plasma chemical processes and the development and application of plasma technologies. He is also working on the development of a new generation of plasma pencils that have a wide application in medicine and archaeology. He is a first author of more than a dozen articles published in international scientific journals. He hopes to continue collaborations with the OU in the coming years both in the study of Titan atmospheres and in development of plasma pencils.
23rd December 2010
CEPSAR Members Attend British Ecological Society Annual Meeting
Three members of the Past Environmental Change research group attended the British Ecological Society Annual Meeting at the University of Leeds (7-9 September). PhD students Macarena Cardenas and Charlotte Miller presented papers related to their research. The talk given by Macarena on Amazonian vegetation change prior to the arrival of humans on the continent attracted numerous questions at a special session sponsored by the Tropical Ecology Group. Charlotte's poster, containing preliminary fossil pollen data from Lake Bosumtwi (Ghana), also attracted a good deal of attention as we sought to communicate the importance of understanding past environmental change to the ecologists. Meanwhile Dr Will Gosling was canvasing for support for his election to the BES council; which he secured during the annual AGM. This will be a four year term as an ordinary member.
20th September 2010
CEPSAR Students Conference
CEPSAR hosted the annual second and third year PhD students conference on 11th and 12th May. There were great talks across the whole range of CEPSAR with presentation standards as high as any international conference for which the students should be justifiably proud. The winner of the best talk, judged by three members of the different departments was Ben Rozitis (PSSRI) with his talk on ‘Moving Asteroids with Sunlight’. Highly commended talks were those from Jon Mason (PSSRI) on ‘Measuring Dust within a Dust Devil’; Melanie Hinrichs (E&ES) on ‘Local environmental impact of persistent volcanism’; and Yvonne Sutton (P&A) on ‘Audio Sound reproduction by thermal expansion in an RF generated plasma’. Congratulations to all those who took part.
Students and staff spent the evening at the CEPSAR curry event and were regaled by a talk from eminent NASA scientist Everett Gibson ‘The Media Discovers Meteorites and Microbes media’, concerning his exploits following the release of the famous study of martian meteorite ALH84001, a talk which included images of several CEPSAR members earlier in their careers!
13th May 2010
24 Hour Observing Time Allocation on the 8.2m Very Large Telescope
Astronomy Research Group second-year postgraduate student Andy Mason, along with his supervisors Dr. Andrew Norton and Dr. Simon Clark has been awarded 24 hour observing time on the 8.2m Very Large Telescope for the period April-September 2010. The project is to carry out infrared spectroscopy of the supergiant donor stars in High Mass X-ray Binaries in order to measure the mass of the accreting neutron star in the system. The observing proposal is the first one submitted by Andy Mason during his PhD, and since the telescope is heavily over-subscribed, represents an excellent success. Andy is now in the second year of his PhD and already has one paper in print, one paper in press, and another in preparation, all as first author. The data from this run should form the basis of one or two further papers.
Eclipsing X-ray Binary pulsars are the only interacting binaries in which the neutron star masses may be measured directly. Seven systems have been so measured (including three previously by our group) and EXO1722-363 & IGR J18027-2016 are two of the three remaining known for which this measurement is possible. Upper limits on neutron star masses are not well constrained theoretically; whilst neutron star masses in binary radio pulsars are consistent with the narrow range 1.35 +/- 0:04 solar masses, evidence exists that millisecond pulsars with white dwarf companions have neutron star masses >1.4 solar masses. Likewise neutron star masses in X-ray binaries are not well constrained observationally; it’s therefore vital that accurate measurements are obtained wherever possible. By obtaining phase resolved infrared spectra of these two objects, we will construct the radial velocity curves of the companion stars and so measure the neutron star masses in these systems, to an accuracy of 10%, sufficient to distinguish between formation channels. The project is jointly with Dr. Paul Roche (Cardiff University & Faulkes Telescope) and Dr. Ignacio Negueruela (Alicante University).
22nd January 2010
New CEPSAR Publication
A controlled water-table depth system to study the influence of fine-scale differences in water regime for plant growth.
A method was developed to maintain water-table depths at a constant level in outdoor mesocosms. The system included a water treatment reservoir, where tap water was microbially deoxygenated and denitrified; an adjustable-level control chamber that set desired water table-depths and plant growing mesocosms. The soil water status was evaluated by constant monitoring using tensiometers, pressure transducers and dipwells. The robustness of the system was tested by inducing sudden incidents of flooding and drainage. The system was able to revert to the original set water-table depths within 5 and 10 minutes respectively. It also reliably sustained consistent water-table depths throughout the growing season without the need for maintenance. As an example, the method was used to grow plants at five set water-table depths: 50, 150, 250, 350, and 450 mm below ground surface. Two wet grassland species Festuca pratensis (meadow fescue), and Carex nigra (common sedge) were grown and dry biomass production recorded. Results showed differences in growth response between the two species to subjected water-table depths. In monoculture, F. pratensis production followed the order 50 = 150 = 350 > 250 = 450 mm (p <0.001), while for C. nigra it was 150 = 250 > 50 = 350 = 450 mm (p<0.001). In mixture, F. pratensis did not show a significant trend (p < 0.06), whereas C. nigra showed 50 = 150 > 250 > 350 = 450 mm (p<0.001). The ease of the system to establish constant and or dynamic water-table depths and its reliability outdoors renders it useful for a wide variety of studies involving plant growth.
Araya, Yoseph N.; Gowing, David J. and Dise, Nancy (2010).
Aquatic Botany, 92(1), pp. 70–74.
5th January 2010
A New approach to estimating hazard posed by debris flows in the Westfjords of Iceland
The aim of this study is to improve the assessment of hazard posed by debris flows to the people and settlements of northwest Iceland by studying very recent examples from above the town of Ísafjörður and other nearby localities. Debris flows are a recognised hazard in the region: above Ísafjörður, they occur with particularly high frequency and have appreciable volumes (up to 14 000 m3). We have used airborne laser altimeter (LiDAR) and differential Global Positioning System (GPS) data to produce isopach maps of flows that occurred in 1999, 2007, and 2008. Our data show that these flows begin depositing at higher slope gradients and are also more mobile than hillslope debris flows reported by other authors. Above a 19° slope, erosion is initiated independent of the distance along the flowpath. Using the isopach maps and associated field observations, we have found a relationship between ground slope and patterns in deposition volume. We have used this finding as a basis for an empirical model that enables an estimate of the total travel distance and final thickness of future debris flows to be calculated. This has enabled us to identify areas of the town which are at risk; some of these are not obvious without this analysis. This model is notable for its simplicity, which allows future debris flow characteristics to be predicted without the need to determine the precise fluid dynamic parameters of the flow such as viscosity and velocity, which are required to implement more complex models.
Conway, S. J.; Decaulne, A.; Balme, M. R.; Murray, J. B. and Towner, M. C. (2010).
Geomorphology, 114(4), pp. 556–572
4th January 2010
PSSRI Students Defy Gravity To Investigate Asteroids!
The AstEx team, winners of the ESA Education Fly your Thesis competition, entered weightlessness for the very first time yesterday. The team consists of three students; Ben Rozitis a PhD Student at the Open University, Naomi Murdoch a PhD student at both the Open University and the Observatoire de la Cote d'Azur (France) and Thomas de Lophem a mechanical engineer studying for a second degree (in physics) at the Open University.
Their parabolic flight experiment contains over one million small glass beads and is designed to investigate how granular material moves on the surface of an asteroid. A typical km-sized asteroid's small mass results in a very low level of gravity at its surface. This means the surface material may behave in a very different way to similar material on Earth. As Naomi's research focuses on the behaviour of granular material on planetary bodies the results of the experiment will form a large part of her thesis.
For more information about the experiment and to see some pictures of the experiment preparation and zero-g experience visit the AstEx website by following the link below.
5th November 2009
CEPSAR Students To Fly Parabolic Flight Experiment
CEPSAR PhD students Ben Rozitis and Naomi Murdoch have been selected to fly a parabolic flight experiment through ESA's student competition Fly Your Thesis! Their experiment entitled 'Simulating Asteroidal Regoliths: Implications for Geology and Sample Return' will fly as part of ESA's 51st Microgravity Research Campaign in November later this year.
Their proposed microgravity experiment will investigate the dynamics of regolith on asteroid surfaces. Despite their very low surface gravities, asteroids exhibit a number of different geological processes involving granular matter. Understanding the mechanical response of this granular material subject to external forces in microgravity conditions is vital to the design of a successful asteroid sub-surface sampling mechanism, and in the interpretation of the fascinating geology on an asteroid. Their experiment will investigate granular flow caused by shear forces in an asteroid regolith simulant under the conditions of parabolic flight microgravity. Their aim is to determine how a steady state granular flow is achieved and what effect prior shear history has on the timescales involved in initiating a steady state flow in a granular material.
The experiment is directly related to both their PhD topics, with Ben focussing on sample return from asteroids, and Naomi focussing on modelling the behaviour of granular material on the surfaces of planetary bodies. Inevitably, it will provide invaluable training for their PhDs and future careers.
17th February 2009
Corporate Backing For CEPSAR Student
Santander Bank has agreed to help finance the research of Earth and Environmental Sciences PhD student Macarena Cardenas as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility programme. Her project, entitled “Climate change impacts on hyper-diverse Amazonian ecosystems”, looks set to provide the first insight into vegetation dynamics in the western Amazonian biodiversity hotspot during previous Quaternary interglacial conditions. The funding from Santander will, among other things, allow Macarena to visit the herbarium at the University of Utrecht to receive advice on wood macrofossil identifications from international expert Dr. Imogen Poole.
11th February 2009
Analysis Of Volatiles In Volcanic Glass By NanoSIMS
The successful outcome of a joint project of Earth and Environmental Sciences's Patricia Clay and PSSRI's Henner Busemann was made possible due to the generous support of CESPAR. A series of measurements on phonolitic glass from Tenerife (Canary Islands) and rhyolitic glass from Iceland were performed recently with the PSSRI NanoSIMS. The goal was to determine volatile contents (H2O, CO2, Cl, F, and S) of the glass in order to decipher their influence on the Ar-isotope system of the samples.
CEPSAR supported the trip to the Carnegie Institution of Washington where the two researchers studied sample preparation, acquired standards, and learned to cope with the challenging analytical difficulties presented with volatile analysis in glass. As a result the OU has now the capability to apply this technique routinely to a large variety of terrestrial and extraterrestrial samples and scientific issues
19th January 2009
CEPSAR Students At UK Planetary Forum
Postgraduate students from CEPSAR presented talks at the UK Planetary Forum’s 6th Early Careers Planetary Scientists’ meeting held at University College London earlier in November. PSSRI's Ben Rozitis showed some beautiful graphics to explain how his thermophysical models of asteroids could help with future sample return missions. Tim Tomkinson also from PSSRI presented both his PhD work looking at re-creating and further investigating the carbonate minerals found in Martian meteorites and his part in the European Student Moon Orbiter ESMO (find out more about ESMO by clicking here.
Susan Conway from Earth and Environmental Sciences talked about her recent work on gullies on Mars, which indicate that liquid water could be active on the surface of Mars. A reporter from Astronomy Now was present at the conference and Susan’s work is presented in the latest edition. Find out more about the article by following the link below.
13th November 2008
Nuffield Student Project With CEPSAR Member Wins Top European Prize And Invitation To Attend 2008 Nobel Prize Ceremony
Ms Elisabeth (Lilly) Muller, a Bedford High School student who carried out a Nuffield-funded lunar project with CEPSAR scientist, Dr Mahesh Anand, has won two top awards at the EU contest for Young Scientists, which was held in Copenhagen, Denmark, from 19-26 September, 2008. Lily's project entitled "From Microcosm to Magma Oceans: A Lunar Meteorite Perspective" was one of the three projects which received the first prize of ?7000. Elisabeth also received an honorary award for Stockholm International Youth Science Seminar, and to attend the 2008 Nobel Prize ceremonies, meet the Nobel Laureates and take part in a series of other scientific/cultural activities during the week.
10th October 2008
CEPSAR Students Attend ESA Workshop
PhD students from CEPSAR have recently attended a two day (24-25 September) workshop at the European Space Agencies Science and Technology headquarters based at ESTEC, Netherlands. The students were invited by ESA and the purpose of the workshop was to support the ongoing work of the student team in developing an instrument for a future moon orbiter mission, the European Student Moon Orbiter (ESMO).
The student's instrument is known as BioLEx (Biological Lunar Experiment) and has recently been made the primary science payload of ESMO following two years of hard work by the student team. The aim of BioLEx is to understand how the space environment affects simple lifeforms beyond Earth's protective ionosphere and into interplanetary space. The work carried out by the team is voluntary and performed in addition to their PhDs providing unparalleled skills development and the opportunity to experience a full space mission very early in their academic careers.
The teams' representatives at the workshop were Paul Wilkinson, Tim Tomkinson and Andrew Morris. Over the two days they met with ESA experts in biological instrument development, were given a tour of the resources available to the team and met with the ESMO mission co-ordinator. There were detailed meetings and all aspects of the teams work were discussed. The outcome of the workshop was a tremendous amount of feedback for the student team with ESA personnel becoming excited by the team's proposals. Invitations were made to the team to return further into the mission and to use the available state of the art laboratories on site.
30th September 2008
CEPSAR Student Returns From 10 Week Trip Designing Asteroid Mission With NASA
CEPSAR PhD student Ben Rozitis has recently returned from a 10 week trip to NASA Ames Research Center, California. He participated in the 2008 Small Spacecraft Summer Study Project (S4P) on Near Earth Objects, run by NASA Ames' University Affiliated Research Center (UARC).
The programme consisted of 11 students competitively selected from Universities across the world, whose brief was to develop and test rigorously one or two concepts for NEO small spacecraft exploration. The team of 11 students (pictured right), advised by Erik Asphaug (UCSC), produced the Didymos Explorer (DEx for short) mission concept, a low cost space mission to the binary (and potentially hazardous) near Earth asteroid (65803) Didymos. The DEx mission aims to accomplish the first in situ investigation of a binary asteroid, and visit an uncommon and previously unvisited spectral class. DEx will take measurements of the two asteroidal bodies in the Didymos system, in order to characterise the surface geology, shapes and gravity fields, Yarkovksy and YORP effects, and macroscale surface composition variations.
After making imaging, spectroscopic, and thermal observations, it will conclude with the deployment of a tetrahedral picolander for in situ characterisation. The DEx mission would launch in November 2014, rendezvous with Didymos in May 2016, and conclude in October 2016. Ben provided expertise and knowledge in the spacecraft characterisation of the Yarkovsky and YORP effects acting upon an asteroid.
The work completed will have direct relevance to his Ph.D., which includes producing a new asteroid thermophysical model suitable for modelling the Yarkovsky and YORP effects. The DEx mission concept is currently under an in-house review by NASA Ames' Mission Design Center to assess the feasibility of the mission. If the review is successful then the DEx mission concept will be proposed at the next NASA Discovery round, where Ben will become a co-investigator for the project.
18th September 2008
Major Milestone For Rosetta Approaches
CEPSAR PhD student Dan Andrews working on the Rosetta mission, nervously awaits to see if an asteroid fly-by passes off without a hitch.
The Rosetta spacecraft is about halfway through its 6.3 billion kilometre journey to rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Dan has been involved with the Ptolemy instrument, a GCMS (Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometer), onboard the comet lander Philae, currently mated to the Rosetta spacecraft. In the past few weeks Ptolemy has successfully completed a comprehensive test of its mass spectrometer, returning valuable calibration spectra. Rosetta is now fast approaching its next major milestone, a flyby of the ~5 km wide asteroid Steins, at a relative speed of 8.6 km/s (31,000 km/h). The closest approach to the
asteroid will be made at 19:37 BST on Friday 5th September, at a distance of 800 km.
Rosetta is currently at a distance of 2.4 AU (360,000,000 km) from Earth, with the flyby being carried out autonomously, without direct communications - first re-contact with Rosetta should be made a nail-biting 90 minutes after the closest approach, with images of the asteroid and other data being returned during the night to the eagerly awaiting scientists. If all goes to plan then Rosetta will continue on its journey with further flybys of Earth in 2009 and asteroid Lutetia in 2010 before finally arriving at the comet in 2014.
5th September 2008
CEPSAR PhD Student Invited To Give Talk At MetSoc
Last week the 71st International Meteoritical Society (MetSoc) conference took place in Matsue, Japan.
Representations from CEPSAR included talks by Tim Tomkinson (Martian Meteorites Session), Henner Busemann (Stardust and Micrometeorites II) and Richard Greenwood (Differentiated Meteorites II: Acondrites). In addition two posters were sent out by Diane Johnson (Differentiated Meteorites: Irons Posters) and Victoria Pearson (Carbonaceous Chondrites). Tim, who is a first year PhD student, gave a talk entitled "Studying the Oxygen and Carbon Isotope Characteristics of Carbonate Analogues to ALH 84001". He discussed planned work with the SEM (Scanning Electron Microprobe), XRD (X-Ray Diffraction) and NanoSIMS (Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometer) to help characterise these carbonates mineralogically and isotopically. Constructed experimental setups will then allow Tim to reproduce the observed carbonates, thus delineating conditions present on early Mars under which these secondary minerals formed. The opening session looked at results from JAXA's (Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency) Moon orbiter Kaguya.
11th August 2008
Newly Confirmed Magnetic Accreting White Dwarfs
In a paper published this week in the European Journal "Astronomy & Astrophysics", CEPSAR members - astronomy PhD student Oliver Butters and his supervisor Dr Andrew Norton have presented results determining the status of three newly discovered accreting magnetic white dwarfs. There are only two dozen or so of these 'intermediate polars' currently known, and the new results, obtained with the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer satellite, significantly increase the census of objects. The paper is co-authored by their collaborators Koji Mukai (Goddard Space Flight Centre) and Pasi Hakala (Tuorla Observatory) as well as Liz Barlow (OU visiting research fellow).
In intermediate polars, a strongly magnetic white dwarf strips material off its low-mass red-dwarf companion star. The material is channelled down the magnetic field lines before impacting the white dwarf and releasing copious amounts of X-rays and other emissions. Confirmatory signatures of the intermediate polar nature of these sources include a coherent X-ray signal, modulated at the white dwarf spin period, and a
characteristic high temperature bremsstrahlung X-ray spectrum containing an iron emission line.
The paper marks the fourth refereed journal paper from Oliver Butters to appear in print during the course of his PhD, and his second paper as first author. One more paper, on polarization properties of intermediate polars, is due to follow before he completes his PhD at the end of this year.
5th August 2008
CEPSAR Students Present Competition Entry To Minister For Science And Education
CEPSAR students Rebecca Wilson and Oliver Butters attended the recent Farnborough International Airshow to represent the Schome space experiment team at the BNSC "Space for Inspiration" exhibit. The Schome space experiment team comprises nine teens from across the UK participating in the Open University based educational research project (Schome Park Project) utilising Teen Second Life® as a virtual learning environment. The “virtual” team is one of six finalists in the BNSC/SSTL competition for teenagers to design a satellite experiment for launch in 2010. The Schome students created a poster about their proposal, which was presented on their behalf by their supervisors (Rebecca and Oliver) to Ian Pearson MP and invited guests. As finalists, the team were also given three book prizes as a memento of the competition.
5th August 2008
CEPSAR Students Participating In ESA's European Student Moon Orbiter (ESMO) Project
ESMO is an ambitious mission being supported, and coordinated, by the European Space Agency (ESA) through the ESA Education Satellite Programme. Unlike a normal mission, each spacecraft subsystem is being designed, built and operated by groups of students based in ESA member states. ESMO is planned to be the first European student mission to the Moon and will launch in 2011/12.
CEPSAR's student team consists of members from all areas of the Centre and they are currently designing and implementing a Biological Lunar Experiment (known as BioLEx) for ESMO. The new website is now live and can be viewed by following the link below.
28th July 2009