The Program
Abouts us Motivation The Experiment Milestones The Program
The REXUS/BEXUS program (Rocket / Balloon Experiment For University Students) offers an opportunity to students to carry out scientific experiments using balloons and rockets to provide special experimental conditions for research e.g. in background radiation or at reduced gravity.
The students take part in the full process of a space project from the first sketches to the launch campaign of the flight carrying their experiment. In the time between first design pitches and launch the students design, construct and test their research equipment, take part in practical trainings as well as in the launch campaign and finally carry out their experiments during the flight of the carrier vehicle and evaluate the data output. The participants publish the result of their experiments, summarizing developments and new knowledge gathered during the project.
Participating teams have to comply with the Europe-wide project schedule, reaching prescribed goals and stages of their project plannings within certain time frames. The progress of the development process is regularly inspected during several project reviews. One project cycle for a REXUS experiment is ca. 18 months with two launches in February/March. A BEXUS project cycle takes about 12 months with two balloon launches in September/October.
The rockets will pass three layers of the atmosphere, tropo-, meso- and stratosphere and finally reach thermosphere at a height of up to 90 kilometres. Each rocket can carry a payload of up to 40 kgs. The rockets are stabilized through their rotation around the vertical axis (spin) and can optionally be equipped with a yo-yo-system, slowing down rotation during the flight to ensure better conditions for low gravity experiments. Up to five minutes of experiment time are provided during a standard flight, going down to two minutes of experiment time during a flight at reduced gravity.
The BEXUS stratosphere balloons fly without additional piloting. They can reach a height of up to 35 kilometers, providing an experiment time frame of two to five hours.
The DLR Space Center in Bonn is assisting the German participants throughout the whole project cycle. On request of DLR engineers from ZARM-Fallturmbetriebsgesellschaft (Center for applied aerospace technology and microgravitation) in Bremen will mentor and assist the student teams with advice and guidance in engineering and project planning. The students will also be collaborating with EuroLaunch, a cooperation of the Swedish aerospace enterprise SSC and MoRaBa, the mobile rocket launch unit of DLR (German Aerospace Center) in Oberpfaffenhofen. EuroLaunch is conducting rocket and balloon launch campaigns from Esrange space center near Kiruna in Sweden.
The program is based on an agreement between DLR Space Management and SNSB (Swedish national aerospace administration) about bilateral development of the student program REXUS/BEXUS. Therefore 50 percent of rocket and balloon payloads is available for Swedish and German teams each. SNSB is offering the Swedish payload share to international teams from all ESA member states and teams from cooperating countries.
Annually in June European national space agencies start their application periods for BEXUS flights in the following year and REXUS launches for the campaign in the year after.