Take a Spin at ESA's ESTEC

European students have a chance to carry out an experiment in hypergravity in the Large Diameter Centrifuge at the European Space Agency's ESTEC center in the Netherlands.

As part of the 2011 “Spin Your Thesis!” campaign, ESA gives students the opportunity of conducting hypergravity experiments, will have a call for proposals after December 10, 2010.

Spin Your Thesis! Is a program that stimulates students to design a scientific or technology experiment that needs hypergravity for a few hours or even days, as part of their course of study.

All teams from ESA Member States and Cooperating States are encouraged to joint the competition, on the European Space Agency's Education Office's project portal and upload their proposals by December 10th.

Four teams will be selected by a review board, and they will develop their experiment in ESTEC, during ESA’s Spin Your Thesis! 2011 campaign, in June 2011.

The competition will last for two weeks and two out of the four teams will use the equipment each week.

The centrifuge can reach accelerations of one to twenty times the Earth's gravity, and each of the four arms can support two gondolas.

The maximum payload for a gondola is 80 kg, and basically there are six gondolas available, plus one situated in the center, for control experiments.

On this centrifuge can be carried out several scenarios, of any length and equipment possible, as it allows experiments that last from one minute to six months.

During the competition, the teams will have the full support of ESA's Education Office, ESA hypergravity experts as well as members of the European Low Gravity Research Association (ELGRA).

ESA will also offer financial support to cover some of the cost of the experiments, travel and accommodation.

The ESTEC is the European Space Research and Technology Center, and it is the largest site and basically the technical core of the space agency.

The incubator of the European space effort is in Noordwijk, The Netherlands and most ESA projects are born here, where over 2000 specialists work on dozen of space projects.