ACTIVITIES

2014 high school graduates with excellent results during high school, which were obtained at international Olympiads or international / global innovation competitions (awards I, II, III / gold, silver, bronze medals or other equivalent awards) are invited to apply for the Young Researcher Scholarship 2014, which aims to stimulate youth with exceptional results to perform their studies in the country and to integrate them into a competitive research group within a higher education institution in Romania.

At the 15th year when it is celebrated worldwide, World Space Week was coordinated in our country, like every time since 1999, by the Romanian Space Agency, during 4-10 October 2014. During this week, nationally there were organized over 50 activities dedicated to space and especially to satellite navigation systems, such as GPS and Galileo.

The team composed by Manuel Ciosici, a Romanian student established in Denmark, and three Danish students won the first prize of the third annual ESA App Camp, an event which took place at ESA’s ESRIN(the European Space Research Institute) centre in Frascati, Italy, and gathered twenty app developers from 11 countries.

Manuel Ciosici is describing the ESA App Camp experience as being unique and a real challenge:

Update 23.02.2015: The HyperMed team, composed of three Romanian students, is one of the four teams selected to develop and conduct their experiments under hypergravity conditions during the sixth ‘Spin Your Thesis!’ campaign. Further details are available here.

The Romanian Space Agency (ROSA) invites teams of Romanian university students to submit proposals for the next “Spin Your Thesis!” campaign which will take place in the autumn of 2015 and will offer them the opportunity to conduct hypergravity experiments.

The sixth SYT campaign, which will take place September-October 2015, is open to four teams of undergraduate, graduate and PhD students from ESA Member or Cooperating States.

40 teachers from 17 ESA Member States took part at the annual ESA Summer Workshop for teachers hosted at the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, between 21 - 25 July 2014.

During this event dedicated to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) secondary school teachers, they were introduced to various methods and resources that allows them to bring space into their classroom. Ovidin Trofin, the Romanian teacher who took part at the event, summed up the workshop by saying:

“I saw something written on the wall of the Space Expo museum next to ESTEC which I think is so true:« Earth needs more Space ».”

ESERO Romania organises, from 4 to 7 September 2014, an introductory space activities and technologies course. The course will be held in Mărișel, Cluj County, at the location of the „Next Generation" Summer School.

Content: The course is aimed at using the space as an attractive context for teaching STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics).

Participants will engage in topics such as the presentation of ESERO Romania, the educational resources of the European Space Agency, astronomy basics, artificial satellites of the Earth, space telecommunications basics, CanSat and practical activities

REXUS/BEXUS, the Rocket/Balloon Experiments for University Students competition started its preselection for the next campaign. This German/Swedish programme allows students from universities across ESA Member and Cooperating States to carry out scientific and technological experiments on research sounding rockets and stratospheric balloons.

The "Ro-Sat One" and "Carmen Sylva 1" Romanian teams won the first prize in the Advanced category and the second prize in the Beginners category at the Cansat 2014 European Competition, that took place between 1-5 June 2014. This year, nine high school students teams from six ESA Member States and five teams that have won national competitions, participated in the contest held at Andøya Rocket Range in Norway.

Wednesday, 11 June 2014, the "Ad Sidera" CanSat project won an award from the Minister for National Education, Remus Pricopie, as the best science project in the national competition “O activitate de succes în Școala Altfel: Să ştii mai multe, să fii mai bun!”. The Romanian Space Agency (ROSA) offered technical assistance for the students participating in the project.

During 9-11 May 2014, EUROAVIA Bucharest (The European Association of Aerospace Engineering Students) and the Romanian Space Agency (ROSA) are organising the Rocket Workshop 2014, a model rocket competition which is dedicated exclusively to all the educational levels students at the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, Polytechnic University of Bucharest.
The 50 participants in the competition were asked to build and launch a model rocket, but only after the had accomplished the three stages of the contest.
The first part, the theoretical one, had been already held at the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering on 9 May and included the actual teaching of computing concepts and designing a model rocket.

Earth Day is celebrated internationally today, 22 April. This annual event aims to draw attention towards the necessity to protect the environment. Celebrated for the first time in 1970, today Earth Day is organised in more than 190 countries. This year, two events will take place in Romania: at the Carpathian-Danubian Centre for Geoecology in Bucharest and at the Mihai Eminescu school in Roman. More details about Earth Day can be read here.

Under the guidance of the Romanian Space Agency (ROSA) and the West University of Timisoara, 30 students of the "Constantin Diaconovici Loga" National College participated in the "Scoala Altfel" at a cans camp. The project was realized with the financial support of the Commission for Culture, Education, Youth and Sport of the Timis County Council, with logistics input from SIVECO Romania and the European Space Agency (ESA).