CaNoRock

I got the chance of a lifetime this fall.  The CSA, along the the universities of Alberta, Calgary and Saskatchewan (in Canada at least) fund an introductory rocketry course called CaNoRock.  It's essentially a one week exchange where they fly us to the Norwegian arctic to do a launch with a bunch of Norwegian students.  I was lucky enough to get selected to go, and on September 30 I started the 2 day trip to Andenes.

Sunrise while flying over the Atlantic

I met the U of A gang in the Edmonton airport, and soon enough I was headed to Europe!  I hadn't really had a chance to get excited but the further I got from home the more it sunk in.  Hopping over to Oslo took only a short flight and soon enough we found ourselves at the airport hotel which had been booked for us.  After waking up at ungodly early hours we flew north to Tromso (Paris of the North!) and then hopped on a Dash 8 which flew us to Andenes on the island of Andøya.  We also managed to meet up with the rest of the Canadians in the Oslo airport which was comforting; we had begun to think we were screwing something up.

Our Dash 8 fueling up in Tromso.  Just like Paris, except not

The Andøya Rocket Range is the northernmost rocket launch facility in the world and is commonly used to launch sounding rockets.  These aren't news headline grabbing human launches to the ISS, but instead they are used to do high altitude scientific experiments.  Even still, NASA was on site assembling their CHAMPS rocket which launched a few days after we left, studying meteorite debris around 120km altitude.

A model of the first rocket launched from Andøya

The island was quite a bit warmer than I had expected (we were in the Arctic Circle, after all) and it was actually a pretty nice place to be!  The Arctic Ocean was right there complete with white sand beaches, and a small mountain range shot up right behind the range.  The weather, on the other hand, wasn't so peachy.  Apparently, 120 days of the year, Andenes experiences gale force winds OR HIGHER.  Still, it's a cool town and an even cooler place considering that I was at a rocket range.

The town of Andenes, Norway

The course got up and running pretty quick.  We got some lectures on general rocketry and then they split us up into small groups to tackle the various parts of the rocket and its launch.  I was placed in the telemetry group, which meant my group would be dealing with the transmission of data from the rocket back to the ground.  We mostly spent our time working with the ground antennas and calibrating the radio equipment for our specific rocket.

The rest of the groups went over the rocket physics, payload, the experiment, and there was even a group devoted to atmospheric sciences.  The rocket physics group modeled the rocket's flight and estimated our apogee elevation and an estimated splashdown location.  The payload and experiment groups worked closely with the sensors we were sending up on the rocket.  The payload group also made sure that the rocket was properly balanced.  The atmospheric group launched two weather balloons and also constructed the humidity sensor that went on board.

On launch day, we all were assigned responsibilities.  I was in charge of steering the manual antenna to receive the radio signal transmitted by our rocket.  It was notoriously tough according to the U of S students; apparently it almost never managed to maintain a radio sync.  The antenna has to be steered using two dials which control the azimuth and elevation angles, so I ran a couple of practice runs to get a feel for the dials and make sure I was at the right angles at the right time.  When the actual launch went down, we kept a sync the whole way.  Disappointingly, the computer software used to download and store the data decided to freeze right after the launch, so we never managed to retrieve the data we collected.

Steering the antenna during the launch.  The antenna is the funny white thing outside the window.

Our rocket blasting off.  I was busy steering the antenna, so this is one of David P's photos.

I learned pretty fast that rocket launches are a lot like hunting; it's all fun until you shoot.  We had a post-flight meeting where we reviewed the launch.  Right after that the calculators came out and we started mashing data.  We prepared our presentations and then went into Andenes for pizza and a brief (read: horribly expensive) visit to a local bar.

Me holding the rocket about an hour before launch.

The course finished off with a tour of the local atmospheric radar station ALOMAR.  They use high powered LIDAR to study the upper atmosphere, which is pretty darn cool.  Apparently their lasers have a safety distance of 350km.  That means that if the ISS were to fly over ALOMAR (it doesn't) the astronauts on it would have to board up all the windows to prevent eye damage.

CaNoRock was one of the coolest things I have done.  It definitely changed the way I look at rocket launches.  There is a lot of work that goes into even a small student rocket like the one we fired off; I can't imagine the preparation that must go into the larger launches they do from Andøya.  This had made me definitely want to get more involved with rocketry and the space industry, we'll see if I can find a summer placement or internship.

If you're a undergraduate student in Physics or Engineering at one of the partner Universities, and you're interested in the aerospace industry, you should definitely check this program out.  I didn't think I had a chance, but low and behold I got accepted.  Information on CaNoRock can be found at the following websites:

ISSET-CaNoRock
ISSET-CaNoRock V (January 2012)
CaNoRock Program Description
Andøya Rocket Range