European Space Agency
ESA Education
STRAPLEX capsule
STRAPLEX capsule
ESA Academy

STRAPLEX – How to Apply

11/03/2007

STRAPLEX is a project for teams, so the first thing to do is form a team of four people. For school teams, you must include a teacher or other adult over the age of 21. For university teams, this is optional, but your application must be endorsed by a professor.

Choose a team leader and begin to design an original experiment that can be carried out in near-space conditions. The STRAPLEX User Manual contains all the technical and safety constraints that you must consider.

Who can apply?

  • You must be aged between 16 and 28 at the time of the STRAPLEX Balloon Campaign;

  • You must hold the nationality of an ESA Member State or Cooperating State*;

  • You must be enrolled as a full-time student in a School or University in an ESA Member State or Cooperating State, at the time of application.

How do I apply?

The deadlines for the 2007 campaign have already passed. Return to this page in January 2008 to find out about the deadlines for the next Campaign.

Each member of the team should register in ESA’s Education Projects database (click the link on the right). Then the team leader should fill in the STRAPLEX team application form at the same website.

Next you should fill in the Experiment Details Form with an outline of your experiment and send it by email to STRAPLEX@esa.int. You do not have to complete every section at first, but try to give as much detail as possible. This form should be regularly updated by the team as the experiment develops.

What happens next?

Experts from ESA and the University of Porto will read all the applications and select the ten best experiments to take part in the STRAPLEX Balloon Campaign. Two back-up experiments will also be selected, in case one of the top ten drops out for some reason. You can read more about the selection criteria by clicking the link on the right.

Information about the outcome of the selection process will be sent to proposers by email approximately 3 weeks after the Experiment Details Form deadline.

A workshop for the ten selected teams and two back-up teams will take place at the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESA-ESTEC) in Noordwijk, The Netherlands.

* The 17 ESA Member States are: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom. Canada, Hungary, Poland, Romania and the Czech Republic participate in some ESA projects under cooperation agreements.