The 5th consecutive year, Ger’s military camp is hosting this week the young rocket, balloon and cansats manufacturers’ meeting organized by the CNES and the Planète Sciences association.
230 young people aged between 9 and 25 years old, will gather near Tarbes, France. They come from France, Austria, Japan, Peru and Russia. Monitored by a hundred people, especially from the CNES and members of the Planète Sciences association, they have to operate 82 aerospace projects between July 15 and 19: 49 mini-rockets; 12 cansats; 2 balloons.
Each project is subject to a follow-up as well as technical and methodological support from Planète Sciences throughout the year. Then, with the launches on Ger’s camp of the 1st Parachute Hussar Regiment, operated with the help of pyrotechnicians of the CNES or aerotechnicians of the association, a whole control track has to be followed. It must guarantee the success of embedded experiences and security which is the historical mission of the CNES since its creation — the first young rocket manufacturers campaign dates back to 1963.
Permanent laboratory.
In the buildings made available by the army to set the project preparation shops, even if the shape of rockets has not changed, the technics keep evolving. Thus, besides the ever more performing miniaturization of embedded components, Arduino micro-controllers and micro-computers are multiplying, while the 3D printers are generalizing alongside the cutters and soldering irons.
VIP day.
This Thursday July 18, it is traditional “VIP day” at C’Space. Almost 90 figures went for the encounter day with the young people and their projects: local elected, officers of the French Ground Army and Air Force, CNES’s and Planète Sciences’s executives and their partners’ representatives (including Airbus Defense and Space, Alcadia, Thales Alenia Space and Sodern).
Moreover, the campaign week is an opportunity for the CNES to set meetings between young participants and professionals of the space sector.
Tribute to Apollo 11.
For the 50th year of the first step on the Moon, Tuesday 16 July at 14:32 (same time than in 1969), a replica of the Saturn 5 launcher was launched… but performed a ballistic flight due to the missed separation of the stage containing the parachute.
More than fifty little rockets with powder and water have also flown the same day, under Planète Sciences’s aegis: in the regions Hauts de France, Île-de-France, Isère, Occitanie, the Sarthe, on Belfort territory and in Vendée.