CNES Job Opportunities

Through ISU, we hear that the French space agnecy CNES is currently looking for young graduates from any ESA member state, having a degree in mechanical, electrical, telecommunications, chemical engineering, or in operations management, quality, safety, communication or public relations, for permanent positions at the Guiana Space Centre, Europe's Spaceport in Kourou.

At least basic knowledge of French is an assset, as French is the official working language at the Spaceport. This website lists currently open positions, but other positions may become available in the short term. You are therefore encouraged to send your application to candidatures.internet@cnes.fr even if your profile does not correspond to these specific vacancies:

ESA Planetary Defense Student Competion

The European Space Agency is holding a competition for the upcoming Planetary Defense Conference in 2009, in order to stimulate some innovative research and encourage European research students to participate. The Advanced Concepts Team (ACT) has come up with a few concepts that young researchers from various fields may wish to research. They have identified the following concepts as potentially interesting:

• Deflecting Binary asteroid systems
• Graveyard orbit deflection
• Deflection strategies using multiple spacecraft
• The Magnetostatic Tractor
• Lorentz Deflection during an Earth fly-by

See here for more details.

KU Students with South Korea's Astronaut

In keeping with the astronaut posts, here is a couple of photos provided by one of our 2nd year students. The first is of KU student, Tejal, and her sister with South Korea's first astronaut Yi So-Yeon.  The second is of the space generations crowd (including KU students Tejal and Jevgeny) with Ms Yi.  These were taken at the IAC 2008.

It's Astronaut Season

Another month, another astronaut! This time it's ESA's Jean-Pierre Haigneré who will be at the Victoria and Albert Museum along with SF author Alistair Reynolds on Friday December 5 for an event called Space Frontiers, part of the V&A's Utopia to Outer Space: Cold War Weekend event (tickets £8).

Haignere flew to the Mir space station twice in the 1990s (hence he is wearing a Russian Sokol spacesuit in the pic). Reynolds is an great guy who writes excellent hard (i.e. technological) SF and who used to work for ESA as an astrophysicist.

ESA astronaut in town

Jean-Francis Clervoy, ESA Astronaut is giving a public talk on Europe's Role in the International Space Station next week at the Royal Aeronautical. Society on Wednesday 12 November. Admission is free and doors open at 6.00 pm. This is an excellent opportunity to see the RAeS HQ, network and hear an astronaut speak. If you get your photo taken with him, we'll put it on the blog!

The physics of snow, northern lights, a visit to the original Ice Hotel and much more........l

Some of you may have met Carol Norberg from Umeå University in Sweden at the IAC last month. Umeå runs a number of extra-curricular courses in space and space-related areas and we just had notification that there are a few places left on their Artic Science course at Kiruna in north Sweden in January.

The key thing from a student point of view is that:

• The course will be given in English
• Tuition will be free, although you must cover your own expenses travel + accommodation) for attending (low-price student accomodation has been reserved for successful applicants)
  

The aim of the course is to give students studying on traditional science and engineering degree programmes insight into the phenomena that one can observe in the arctic environment during the winter months, such as the aurora borealis and mother of pearl clouds.

The course also contains an introduction to snow and ice-related phenomena. The course is a distance course with a gathering 7-10 January in the exotic town of Kiruna, which lies in the north of Sweden, above the Arctic Circle. The town is home to the Swedish Institute of Space Physics, the Swedish Space Corporation Esrange, a site for launching rockets and balloons, Spaceport Sweden and the famous Ice Hotel.

Prerequisites are that students should satisfy the general requirements for eligibility for university studies at Umeå University and have a physics major at upper secondary school level or similar qualifications. For more information see www.irf.se/link/winter_course.

It Is Rocket Science!

During the last year I worked with comedienne Helen Keen and her writing partner Miriam Underhill on It Is Rocket Science!, a space-and-rocketry-themed show for the 2008 Edinburgh Fringe. It had great reviews and this week comes to the Dana Centre in London for one night only - Tuesday 4 November. Go see it!