ASGARD IN DETAIL: WHAT?

Balloons for science – Balloons for education

ASGARD is a school project organised by Sint-Pieterscollege Jette (teacher and organisor Erik de Schrijver) together with the Belgian Space Pole institutes ROB, RMI, BIRA and STCE. ESERO Belgium promotes and supports the project together with several other school projects that bring space exploration into schools. We offer direct support to Belgian teachers who are interested to participate or who are already participating. Teachers can contact us daily with any question.

ASGARD is no competition. Once your team is accepted to participate, you try to have a well working and positively tested experiment on the day of the launch. All particpants together form an ASGARD community that can help each other in this mission. Exchange of experiences and working together is not structurally provided in the project, but is still rewarding for all teams.

English is the common language for all communications, because partcipants come from all Belgian regions and every year we have teams aboard from several other countries. The whole ASGARD community – students, teachers, project organizers – communicate in English, during the preparations and during the launch days in Brussels. Students will give their presentations in English too. Only primary school teams will be guided in Flemish or French.

The flight

  • With a stratospheric balloon of the RMI/KMI/IRM
  • To a height of +/- 30 km:
  • More than 99% of the air is below you, and the sky above looks completely black.
  • If you point the camera to the horizon, you can see the curve of the Earthball and a tiny vulnerable layer of blue air (the troposphere).
  • We pass the main part of the ozon layer
  • We arrive in a near-vacuum, and the experiments come into an environment with almost the same physical condition as the surface of Mars.

Atmospheric conditions of the flight

Life tracking of an ASGARD balloon

Watch the flight from an onboard camera

In 2018 the students of KA Zottegem (teacher Thomas De Roose) have filmed the flight with a 360° camera from the preparation on the ground until the highest point in the stratosphere. So you can watch about one hour of balloon flight (filmed from the gondola side) here. While the video is playing, you can swipe around in all directions.

About the launch days

Part of the program runs in the Planetarium of the Royal Observatory of Belgium (Brussels, Heizel), and part of it runs at the Earth- and Space Science plateau in Ukkel, where the KMI-IRM is located among other science institutes. Many student teams stay overnight in a hostel in Brussels (Meininger City Center), where they can sometimes work together and exchange experiences with other teams.

The launch days programme

The program in detail will be communicated to the teams shortly before the start of the launch days. You will stay in Brussels for 3 days. Schools can choose to follow the day programs with or without staying overnight in Brussels (there is no evening program offered by the organisation). The main activities are:

  • An inspiring presentation from a professional space scientist.
  • Every team gives a presentation about their work to the other teams.
  • Final integration and check of all experiments into the gondola just before launch.
  • Launch, monitoring and recovery of the student experiments with the ASGARD balloon.
  • The teams enjoy a wide offer of parallel workshops, guided tours or infosession given by professionals from the science institutes.
  • Every team gives a presentation at the end about their results to the other teams.

About the organising partners

The founder and organiser of the ASGARD project is Physics teacher Erik de Schrijver from Sint-Pieterscollege Jette. The Planetarium (Heysel, Brussels) and the Space Pole institutes (Uccle) host the ASGARD project.

Traditionally, during launch day, the students have the opportunity to participate in several workshops and visit some of the facilities of the 3 institutes at the Space Pole, all guided by professional scientists. Some of these workshops and visits include: spectroscopy and other space research techniques and current space missions at BISA (also know as BIRA), the big telescope at the ROB, the weather bureau at RMI, the solar walk along PROBA-2, the space weather forecasting center, presentations on the solar telescopes and the sunspor number. The students meet with scientists and can do Q&A.

ESERO Belgium is hosting the communication of ASGARD on www.esero.be on dedicated ASGARD pages. The ASGARD project is also widely promoted by ESERO Belgium as one of the space education projects for schools. ESERO Belgium offers direct support to any teacher who is participating or interested to participate. We give trainings and answer any question on a daily base. Each year, ESERO is trying to find some additional budget to support ASGARD (logistics, hardware, problem solving).

ASGARD IN DETAIL: WHO CAN JOIN?

Secondary schools

  • Every secondary school in Belgium can apply with a team and an experiment proposal.
  • For secondary schools there is no restriction concerning school system or study field. The students should be in the 3rd year or older (usually between the ages of 16-19 years old).
  • Schools from anywhere in the world can also apply and participate, although the project doesn’t provide a travelling budget. All schools are supposed to be present in Brussels for the 3 days of the launch campaign.
  • A maximum of 5 students and 2 teachers are allowed to join the launch campaign in Brussels. If more students are working on the ASGARD experiment, then the school has to make a selection of max 5 students per day to be present in Brussels. The others have to stay at school.

Primary schools

  • Each year, one or two primary schools from Belgium can participate with a ‘light’ experiment. They will be invited with the whole class to join 1 day of the launch campaign with a program in their own language.
  • We are planning to build a webpage about ASGARD for primary schools, but you can already contact us now to get help in your own language (Flemish or French).

ASGARD IN DETAIL: WHEN?

Some dates are not decided yet (xx/xx/2024). As soon as we recieve a final calender, we will publish it here.

11/11/2023Deadline for sending your proposal
December 2023ASGARD jury selects teams for participation
30/01/2024First progress report (TBD)
03/03/2024Final Design Description: report about final mass, hardware design, power consumption peak and average consumtion (if you use electronics)
15/03/2024Flight hardware should be ready to start testing
30/03/2024Testing flight hardware finished.
07/04/2024Final (second) Progress Report + delivering hardware to Planetarium Brussels or St-Pieterscollege Jette
24-26/04/2024Launch Campaign in Brussels
25/04/2024ASGARD XIII flight

ASGARD IN DETAIL: HOW?

We want to join !

  • Download the application form (button here).
  • Describe your experiment proposal and your team, and send the completed form to organiser Erik de Schrijver (email mentioned on the form).
  • The ASGARD jury will make a selection of participating teams in december. Once accepted by the jury, your participation will start.
  • In most years, we usually receive a bit more proposals then can be accepted on the flight. The ASGARD jury will always try to have a maximum of experiments on board, but we are restricted by the maximum weight that can be lifted by the stratospheric balloon. However, in all the previous years, a majority of the proposals could be accepted to participate. Sometimes the Jury will accept an experiment proposal, but with a more limited maximum weight or other additional conditions.

How much will it cost?

  • Participating in ASGARD is for free, but the organisation will not be able to cover all the additionals costs per team
  • Included, for free:
    The balloon flight and the workshops/tours at the Space Pole institutes
    Sandwich lunch during launch days
    Some hardware like shared battery power and safety fuses (ask Erik)
  • Not included (at your own cost):
    Transport expenses
    Hardware for your own experiment
    Night accomodation, breakfast, evening dinners

ASGARD IN DETAIL: FOR THE TEACHER

Inspiring examples

The most frequent question we get from teachers is: can I see some ASGARD mission examples from other teams from past editions? Well, you can already find some examples if you click the button below. It shows some ‘scientific posters’ that students teams have made in the past. We ask every team to produce such a poster at the end of their ASGARD mission (even if your results were disappointing) for two reasons:

  1. It is a good exercise to learn communicating about your work and your scientific results (like real scientists do),
  2. It is an excellent way to show other people examples of ASGARD missions, and so inspire other teams or interested teachers/students.

Manual for teachers

In this updated manual you find some detailed information about the project and about the balloon flight. Of course there is a lot more detail you can discover once you are participating. This manual is made and yearly updated by Erik de Schrijver (teacher, organiser, ASGARD specialist).

    Trainings

    ESERO Belgium will provide at least 1 ASGARD teacher training every year. This year we have an online infosession with Q&A on September 27th, 2023. Find out more by clicking the button.

    If you bring together a group of minimum 10 teachers participating in an ASGARD training, then ESERO Belgium can give this training for free at your desired location and date. Contact us if you want this.

      Any more questions?

      Here we collect questions that were asked by teachers and answered by ESERO Belgium. They might be relevant for you too.

      Usually around 20 proposals are selected to participate. In the last years, this was about half of the proposals we received. The beginners/advanced ratio is usually between 1/3 and 2/3.


      Yes, one school can submit more than one proposal, but the jury will usually select one proposal per school, to keep as many schools on board as possible.

      We offer:

      • Free participation at the program in the scientific institutes and Planetarium during 3 launch days.
      • Free access to the balloon flight for your experiment.
      • Free sandwich lunch during the 3 launch days.

      You provide at your own cost:

      • Your experiment hardware, testing, software, …
      • Evening dinners and breakfast during launch days in Brussels.
      • All transport you need with your team.
      • If your team stays in Brussels at night, the night accomodation is not offered by the project organisation. There is a hostel where most ASGARD teams stay for the nights (Meininger City Center), and where you can meet other teams in the evenings and work together on the recovered experiment after the flight.

      In general you have to provide your own testing facility. But if your team really has difficulties to find things like a vacuum pump or freezing devices, contact Erik de Schrijver. He will try to help you. Such help can also be provided by other ASGARD teams, they often have the same needs as you. It is strongly recommended to ask other teams if they can help you.

      We need to know basic properties of your experiment to assure it can be integrated in the gondola together with all other hardware:

      • What is the final mass of your experiment? Please never exceed this mass!
      • Deliver pictures of your hardware or components, so we can estimate if the volume it takes will fit into the gondola. Let us know what components need to be inside or outside the gondola and how these component need to be connected.
      • If you use electronics: give us the average and peak power consumption, so we can make sure the batteries will be sufficient for the whole flight.

      The finished flight hardware should be delivered to the Planetarium of Brussels (Boechoutlaan 10
      1020 Brussel) or Sint-Pieterscollege Jette (Leon Theodorstraat 167, 1090 Jette), always clearly labeled “for Erik de Schrijver, ASGARD”. You can deliver it personally during opening hours or send it in a closed box by mail.