We Published Our Findings!

Hej hej hej, it's Georges and he is time warping into the pandemic blog posting future of 2021. Hello, this has been quite a trip. Wow! This update is long overdue but here it is. Better late than never, amiright?

First thing's first, we never did do a reflight of the experiment because things didn't work out in that direction in the end. However, the super duper neat (late) news is that we did publish our findings in not just one but two conference papers!

Read all about it in the proceedings for the 24th ESA Symposium on European Rocket & Balloon Programmes and Related Research (October 2019) and the 3rd Symposium on Space Educational Activities (April 2020).

Links to the papers are on the top of the landing page. Still waiting for those elusive citations, though! Alright folks, I'm pretty sure this is the last update. It was a pleasure. Thank you all for your support, peace out!

• Author: Georges L. J. Labrèche
• Date: April 26, 2021

Another Symposium

Hi guys, guess who's back? Georges is blog posting again for an update on more symposium adventures which took place on September 16-18. This blog post is a month late, I know!

This time around we had Pau present TUBULAR at the 3rd Symposium on Space Educational Activities in Leicester, UK. Needless to say, he had a great time!

As was the case for Erik during the 24th ESA Symposium, many participants encouraged us to go through with a re-flight in order to validate the AAC sampling system (that's the one with the bags, remember?). It's a great motivator to see so many people excited about our experiment even if it's been a while since we launched. One exciting outcome of these two symposiums are the research papers that we will publish, stay tuned!

What about the reflight with FMI, you ask? We are now targetting July 2020. This may seem far away but I'm pretty sure that the months will fly by in a blink of an eye.

• Author: Georges L. J. Labrèche
• Date: October 16, 2019

Recover Lost Data

Hi guys, it's Pau from mechanical department!

I'm writting again to let you know about an issue I ran into while working on the paper for the 3rd Symposium on Space Educational Activities. I will be attending the event on mid September in Leicester (UK) to present our project including the prupose, the design characteristics, the results obtained, and the future plans.

However, the reason behind this blogpost is to update you about me doing what I shouldn't have had to. Do not erase your computer recicle bin, they say. Well, as usual, I did, and inside I had, accidentally, part of the text I had been writting for the scientific paper. Keeping calmed is key for any engineer. In this case, it helped me find the solution and being able to, fortunately, recover the lost data. I did so thanks to the FonePaw Data Recovery product.

This software allowed me to quickly scan the lost files in my computer and fastly recover them being able to keep working on the paper with no harm at all. It features several options that allow for an easy and safe search. Before starting, the user can select where in the disk and what type of files wants to find. This allows to use the scanning time wisely. I personally focused the search on my entire solid state disk where I have my macOS installed, and set it to find all sort of documents since I was looking for a text (.txt) file. In addition, the scanning can be paused and resumed at any time, which allows for checking if the file lost has already been found or to put the search on stand by until a later moment. In my case, it took less than 10 minutes to find the accidentally erased file, I got lucky to learn about FonePaw right on time. The user iterface is really simple and it even provides preview of the files before actually recovering them. The program ensures a 100% recovery of erased files, which I can confirm based on the results of my quick scan. On top of this, a deeper scanning mode can be selected which gives even better performance and results. Undoubtly, I would highly recommend anyone who loses a file to use this software, completly worth it! It is an all arrounder offereing countless other options to recover data of all kinds (images, videos, documents, emails, audio, and archives) from external hard disks, memory cards or even crashed computers and corrupted disk partitions. Explore more features and learn about FonePaw Data Recorey program specs in its website; www.fonepaw.com/data-recovery/

• Author: Pau Molas Roca
• Date: July 30, 2019

Symposium Time

Hi guys, it's Georges! Last you heard from us was from Erik as they were prepping to present our experiment at the 24th ESA Symposium on European Rocket and Balloon Programmes and related Research.

The entire team was thrilled to get updates from our Swedish delegates Erik, Emil, and Gustav as they attended the symposium and got to meet a whole bunch of interesting peeps. Thank you so much to the organizers but a special thank you to our sponsors the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Swedish National Space Agency (SNSA) for making it possible for our Swedes to attend.

The reflight with FMI is still in the back burner but someone at the Symposium also suggested that maybe we could also be able to fly on the HEMERA H2020, will we apply?!

HEMERA is "a Research Infrastructure funded by the Horizon 2020 framework Programme of the European Union which integrates a large starting community in the field of tropospheric and stratospheric balloon-borne research, to make existing balloon facilities available to all scientific teams in the European Union, Canada and associated countries."

• Author: Georges L. J. Labrèche
• Date: June 20, 2019

Next Goal Symposium

Hello, Erik is back again after a long break! So you must be wondering by now what is happening with the TUBULAR team.

After the launch and a handing in our SED version 5 we have had some more relaxing time, fixing for the re-flight planning when it is gonna happen. We are super excited that FMI is considering another flight just for us and the only thing left is to to find good winds for a launch day.

Now the amazing part, we have been invited by ESA to present our experiment at the 24th ESA Symposium on European Rocket and Balloon Programmes and related Research. To prepare for it, I have been working on a brand new poster that we can bring with us and also a presentation to tell the people attending all about TUBULAR and our achievements.

If you are interested to follow us at the symposium we shall try publish some on our facebook page to keep everyone updated when we are in Essen, and if you have not read the SED v5.0 yet, go in and read it or at least the result to see the good work done by all of the TUBULAR team.

• Author: Erik Fagerstrom
• Date: April 10, 2019

The Results Are In

Hej people! It's been a while but we're back with some results. Rejoice! Trace gas concentrations are measured in parts per million (ppm) and parts per billion (ppb). A decreasing concentrationtrend is observed for CO 2, CH4, and CO as the altitude increases. The maximum values are approximately 407 ppm for CO 2, 1.9 ppm for CH 4, and close to 89 ppb for CO.

A sharp decrease of CO2 can be observed in the first layers above the tropopause. Tropopause altitude was at 274 hPa, about 9.8 km. In the stratosphere, values are lower since the exchange between the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere takes several years. Variability is higher near the ground, which agrees with the idea that CO2 may have negative and positive anomalies at the surface that are mainly associated with vegetation uptake and anthropogenic emissions.

The mixing ratios of CH4 have a small variability in the troposphere. A strong decrease in the stratosphere is easy to spot with a value of 1.85 ppm near the tropopause and 1.33 ppm at 15.2 km (118 hPa). Variability is higher in the mid-to-upper troposphere and in the stratosphere, which is mostly due to positive anomalies coming from the surface and negative anomalies coming from the stratosphere.

It is difficult to draw any conclusions based on measurements extracted from a single sampling flight. Variations of greenhouse gas concentrations would have to be observed through time with data collected over numerous re-flights. Hungry for more? I bet! You can read about in the latest version of the SED, download it now!

• Author: Georges L. J. Labrèche
• Date: January 24th, 2019

Our Baby in the Esrange ICU

The last time you saw us we had just recieved our AAC baby back from the flight and discovered that it had unfortunately failed to sample anything, but we didn't yet know why. So the very first thing the next morning, 19th October, our poor little baby got sent to the Esrange ICU for failure analysis.

As we didn't know what went wrong the with AAC we had to follow very strict procedures to ensure that we did not destroy the evidence! We assigned Kiki to note taker, myself to photographer, Emil to electronics diagnoser and Pau to mechanics diagnoser and got to work.

Taking off one wall at a time we completed a throuough visual inspection of all parts of the experiment and found everything to be as it should. Once this was complete we moved on to connection testing, looking for shorts or bad connections. Again no problems were detected.

Finally we tried turning everything back on. To our surprise everything worked. Including the pump. We managed to trace the problem back to a current limitation on the pump which was then dropping the voltage causing the Arduino to reset. But still we didn't know the exact cause of this. Now we've taken a little time for respite we're back to our post flight analysis and we've begun investigating why we're seeing this problem on the pump in the hopes that we can solve it and fly our system again!

• Author: Natalie Lawton
• Date: November 8th, 2018

Sometimes You Just Have to Let it Go...

The pump rides high on the bexus balloon, Not a sputter to be seen, The bags we know are empty, When the airflow doesn’t move. The PCB it just resets over again, It looks like this is it, our box is dead.

Don’t give up hope, Don’t quit it now, Maybe we can save something somehow, The CAC it can still work, So don’t let that valve close

Let it go, let it go, Don’t love the pump anymore, Let it go, let it go, The CAC can show us more

The air don’t care if its bags or tubes, Let the samples come, The pump never bothered me anyway

• Author: Natalie Lawton
• Date: October 18th, 2018

AirCore Recovered

The recovery team drove around 860 km to recover our AirCore. They had to hike 5 km through the forest in order to get to it it so 10 km in total. It took around 13 hours to recover it by car and by foot. A big thank you to the recovery team lead by Stefan Krämer from the Swedish Space Corporation (SSC).

Since we closed the valve at 6.5 km altitude, we expected the pressure inside the coil to be 440 mBar, but when we got it back we found it was at sea level pressure. This could have meant one of two things - 1) the valve never opened and the AirCore was still full of fill gas 2) there was a leak through the valve.

After plugging it in, there was a moment where it was fill gas and then suddenly the CO concentration dropped dramatically indicating that we had stratospheric air! What a relief, we have something! The tropospheric samples are questionable but the stratospheric samples are very good. The stratospheric air samples have been stored in 15 pieces of tubing FMI brought with them so that they may later run further analysis.

What about our other sampling system, the one with the bags? Alas, it suffered from a component failure with the air pump. We mitigated by switching to manual mode and sending valve commands for passive sampling. We haven't recovered this part of the experiment yet. I must say, it was quite amazing how the team handled the malfunction as it unfolded and came up with a new plan. Telecommanding is super cool. Stay tuned to find out if it actually worked!

• Author: Georges L. J. Labrèche
• Date: October 18, 2018

Launch!

We launched our experiment! What a moment to finally witness after so much hard work and perseverance during the past year.

No matter the outcome, we're grateful for the experience and would like to thank everyone who supported us - the organizers, our partners, the sponsors, our school, professors, families, friends, the blogpost readers, and everyone who took interest in our project and encouraged us with their positive energy and enthusiasm.

Now we eagerly track our flight from the ground station to see if our experiment runs as planned.

Thank you all!

• Author: Georges L. J. Labrèche
• Date: October 17, 2018

Flight Compatibility Test

Flight Compatibility Test has been completed successfully!

But what exactly is a Flight Compatibility Test. For the Esrange launch team this is the most important test of the whole camapaign and it is essentially a run through of all the actions that need to take place before flight to check that everything goes as expected and that everyone knows what they're doing.

To begin Hercules, the giant tractor, came along and picked up our gondola. After everything was secured and checked Hercules then drove out to the "sweet spot" on the balloon pad. This is where there is a direct line of sight from the E-link room to the gondola. Here multiple checks are carried out making sure everything is communicating properly. We also run through a practise of the late access.

Once everything is complete Hercules rolls back into the Dome and gives our gondola back to us for the night, as seen in the picture. With a successful pass on this test our gondola is ready to fly ^-^

• Author: Natalie Lawton
• Date: October 16, 2018

Launch Campaign

Breaking News. Few minutes ago, all the flight preparations for the CAC were succefully completed! CAC baby is ready to fly!

AAC baby needs some more preparations, but everything is as planned!

Later today we will have the first meteorological briefing. Our Project Manager will bring us the good/bad news regarding the weather forecast for Wednesday. The last thing for day 3 will be to flush the AAC's manifold and to replace the old bags with new ones.

Stay tuned Tubular people!

• Author: Kyriaki Blazaki
• Date: October 15, 2018

Heart Stopper

Today we had our individual experiment testing. Everything started pretty well. We mounted everything into the gondola, no problems. We plugged the power in, no problems. We connected the E-link cable, no problems. Then we begin e-link testing. Enter problems.

We would use the walkie talkie to communicate with software, who were up on the balcony, to see if there were any problems. The board would appear to reset or the temperature sensors would stop giving data. Everytime we asked them over the walkie talkie if there were any problems there would seem to be problems. But then we could also go longer stretches of time with no problems. But for sure everytime we used the walkie talkie to ask if there were any problems a problem would suddenly appear. Which is when the penny dropped. The problem occurs every time we talk, every time we turn on the walkie talkie.

In addition to building an air sampling system we have also apparently built a reasonably sized antenna. So when we talk to close to the experiment on the walkie talkie it interferes with our experiment and causes an steep increase of blood pressure in TUBULAR team members.

TUBULAR now recommends the use of more old fashioned means of communication such as two tin cans and a piece of string, smoke signals, flag semaphores, carrier pidgeon or just shouting really, really loud.

• Author: Natalie Lawton
• Date: October 14, 2018

Launch Campaign - Day 1

First day of the launch campaign has begun and we're fit checking the experiment in the gondola.

Over the next few days we will test the experiment with the gondola e-link system, run interference checks, and make a flight compatibility test.

Our first launch opportunity will be on Wednesday, stay tuned!

• Author: Georges L. J. Labrèche
• Date: October 13, 2018

Here they come

Ladies and Gentlemen, its the captain speaking. Welcome on board! There will be some final preparations before we take off. Fill the balloon, fasten you seatbelts, people WE ARE FLYING!

(Serious me now). Friday evening already, which means that the launch campaing is about to start! Only a few hours far! Four team members and I, arrived today at Esrange where we will do some final testing with our experiment and the gondola. Next step is the flushing of the AAC and CAC systems. On Wednesday we will have our first chance to fly if the weather allows it. And pretty much, these are our launch campaign days.

Earlier today, our partners from FMI arrived at space campus in Kiruna! They brought the Aircore and all the necessary equipment for the data analysis. Mechanical team, put the Aircore in its box while other team members were packing the tools and things we are going to need. There was a checklist around, to make sure we won't forget anything. And off we go!

Now, after a looong day, some sleep FINALLY! AAC, CAC systems are sharing a room, like Natalie and I, and Emil and Pau. The Picarro analyzer is in a single room like Ansyar. Tomorrow, the whole team will be here for the safety briefing which is mandatory for anyone who wants to be here at the launch day. We will try our best to keep you updated. Goodnight!

• Author: Kyriaki Blazaki
• Date: October 12, 2018

EAR We Go!

We just underwent the Experiment Acceptance Review (EAR) to ensure that the experiment is flight ready... and it is!

A round of applauses and pats on the backs for everyone on the team. Also, check out SED v.4.0!

Next step - Esrange Space Center where the launch will take place sometime next week. What a year it's been to get to this point.

A big thank you to Stefan Krämer from the Swedish Space Corporation (SSC) who took the time to come to Kiruna and review the experiment for us. Thank you for the pass, Stefan!

• Author: Georges L. J. Labrèche
• Date: October 10, 2018

Imperial Acceptance Review

Today, all of us were a bit nervous in light of the Imperial Acceptance Review (IAR) from Lord Vader himself. We're still a bit confused of what to make of his comment regarding our experiment;

“Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed. The ability to sample trace gases in the stratosphere is insignificant next to the power of the Force.”

I think this is good feedback.

I think we'll be fine...

• Author: Georges L. J. Labrèche
• Date: October 6, 2018

Closer Than Ever

9 days remain until we get our visit from REXUS/BEXUS for our Experiment Acceptance Review (EAR) to tell us if we its a fly or no fly result.

Thanks to our forward planning and everyone sticking to our internal deadlines we now only have a couple of things left to do. Gluing some of our sensors down into permanent positions now all testing is wrapped up, cleaning out our pneuamtic system one last time before we fully seal it and last but not least getting the final weight of our boxes.

We still aim to be done with all these tasks by the end of this week giving us a little breathing room and some time to clean up the lab ^^'

For now its back to the final preparations and dreaming of the launch campaign.

• Author: Natalie Lawton
• Date: September 1, 2018

SED Fuel

Team TUBULAR has made their home in Kiruna's learning centre once more. This can only mean one thing, it's SED writing party time once again.

We're now up to the 4th version of our SED which updates on the third version with the results from testing and if any changes have occured during manufacture.

In order to keep the TUBULAR engine runnning it's important to keep the fuel tanks full and today we got an express delivery that did just that.

Now with full bellies everyone is ready to get back to it ^-^

• Author: Natalie Lawton
• Date: September 22, 2018

There we go,

Greetings from the rainy Kiruna people! It's Kiki writing to you today, from the science team. It has been a super busy period since my last post.

We did a second trip to the Finnish Meteorological Institute where we run some new tests, and repeated others. We checked if the way we flush the bags is sufficient. We tested the holding time of the bags again, and run some leakage tests. Thermal, software and electrical tests were also included. Oh! The AirCore baby was also tested! After some adjustments it fits in its crib! Success! Unfortunatelly, we didn't take it with us, since it has to go through some special preparations before it's ready to fly!

In general, the results were good and we are super happy about it! The flushing of the bags passed the test with good results, and the holding times of the bags were satisfactory! Looks like the bags can hold a sample for 48 hours and still give very good results! There are some minor leakages which won't affect our results. What is more, we tested if the valves work normally in a low-pressure environment, and if the flushing valve is still 'alive' after leaving it open all night. All good people! All good :)

This trip gave us precious lessons. Almost one month before the flight, one would assume that the team knows everything about their experiment. But this is not the case. Every day, and especially while testing, something new comes up. Even if it is a new idea or a new problem. But so far, we were able to overcome the problems and this is what it matters! Keep up the good work team! Cheers!

• Author: Kyriaki Blazaki
• Date: September 20, 2018

Home Stretch

With 3 weeks until our Experiment Acceptance Review (EAR) and 3 weeks and 2 days until the start of the launch campaign it's all systems go in the team right now. We're now on the final tests and tweaks, making sure everything is running perfectly. We're aiming to be finished a week earlier than this and we're confident we will make this internal deadline.

It wouldn't be a true student experiment if we weren't still having some lingering problems. Vacuum testing has finally completed two days late after days full of recoding the software, discovering one power source was current limiting us, losing the adapter for the MicroSD card and finally breaking our power adapter forcing us to undergo some rapid resoldering. However we persevered and now we can finally say vacuum testing is passed!

Next up comes the mechanical tweaks and testing. Prior to testing in Finland we felt we needed to re-do some of the tubing and the Finland trip only confirmed this. Once the tubing is re-done we will move onto our static load and impact testing. The trick here is to test the experiment well without breaking anything, but team confidence is high we can achieve this.

As I write this we are also doing the first of our long duration tests. Early this morning we plugged the PCB into the temperature sensors and will leave it running all day. The purpose is troubleshooting after we noticed some problems during thermal testing. Hopefully today's test will shed some light on the problem and confirm if it is a software or electrical issue.

• Author: Natalie Lawton
• Date: September 19th, 2018

Tests

Hey everybody! It's been a week I am in Kiruna and mainly we have been running tests and more tests. More precisely I have been working at the vacuum chamber with the members of software and science divisions and the project manager. We have been trying to check that the software works according to the sampling methodology at low pressure. Also, we want to know the pump flowrate at any altitude.

Even though it seems like tests never end and every day there is a new problem, we have to be positive. Thanks to these tests we found out a bug in the software that is being solved by our amazing software team!

Today we were supposed to test the flowrate of the pump but guess what... when we were setting up everything we found out that the power connector of the PCB was broken. The reason is that it has been bent due to the size of the vacuum chamber. We are not sure when this exactly happened but this is postponing all our tasks! Let's hope we can sort it out soon and keep working!

• Author: Núria Agües Paszkowsky
• Date: September 18, 2018

Thermal evaluation remains

Now I am back and today were election day in Sweden will be interesting to see how this works out.

But back to the more fun part, this last week they have been doing some thermal testing in Finland at FMI and I have been eagerly waiting to see how it have been going and if the calculations and simulations have been correct.

Even if I were not with them enjoying a lot of hour close to a freezer I have been working on some more accurate PCB thermal simulations to see more closely how the PCB should behave. Also acting as thermal support if they had any questions. For now it is just sit and evaluate their results and see what we can do as improvements.

• Author: Erik Fagerstrom
• Date: September 9, 2018

Our Baby

Hej people! This is my last post before going back to Kiruna from summer! I can’t wait to get back there and meet our baby! I keep seeing the pictures my team mates send and picture after picture it becomes more exciting!

What started as an idea in our minds has become a reality thanks to the hard work of the TUBULAR members that stayed in Kiruna. Kiki, Emil and Jordi are currently at FMI working on some tests and will be back by the end of the week. The countdown has started!

In a few days, I will be able to touch the baby! (WITH GLOVES, OF COURSE).

• Author: Núria Agües Paszkowsky
• Date: September 5, 2018

Something Is Missing

Oh geez, what happened here? I'm absent for ONE day and our entire experiment just up and vanishes into thin air! I think the rest of the team might have known something I didn't...

Hello again, good readers! The box is gone and so is everyone else - at least for now. We should be six people short right now, due to three having gone to Finland and another three being elsewhere in Europe. The pipe fittings were completed, as were the electronics sections, at least for full-body testing.

So with that done, the rest of TUBULAR in Kiruna rests (they REALLY deserve it), while I sit here wondering anxiously what part comes next for us.

• Author: Ivan Zankov
• Date: September 02, 2018

Beautifull PCB Baby!

Hej! Emil here again. It's been a long time since I last wrote to you. Today is the last day before the FMI trip and we are finalising and making sure that everything is ready for the test in the coming week.

Lucky me, being electrical I got to work with beautiful pcb's a lot and you can see from the image that it looks beautiful! This is all thanks to our great partners at Eurocurcuit who decided to sponsor our PCB's! Thanks guys! It really helped us a lot!

Usually, when you design PCB's and you send them to a manufacturer you have to provide gerber files for the manufacturer. For someone who just designed their first pcb this can be a bit tricky. But manufacturing with Eurocircuits is super easy since you can just upload your Eagle files, set your pcb thickness and BAM, you are done, ready for manufacturing. Super easy!

Now there is only 4.5 hours until I leave for Finland and every minute that is saved I get one more minute of sleep and again thanks to Eurocircuits I at least got 2 extra days of sleep! Now, back to making sure the experiment works. Until next time, Ha de gött!

• Author: Emil Nordqvist
• Date: September 2nd, 2018

T-10 hours

The time for our return visit to the Finnish Meteorological Institute in Sodankylä has finally come around and now we find ourselves with only hours left until the departure time.

Our hardy team of three, Kiki from science, Jordi from mechanical and Emil from Electrical will leave at 4am tomorrow morning to make the 5 hour trip. Since they have to be up so early we are aiming to be done by 8pm tonight, which is only 10 hours away now!

If we were working by regular standards we would never have been able to make this deadline, but luckily our team is not restricting themselves to regular working hours and people have been coming in early, staying late and working weekends to make this happen. Now we have the final push to get everything ready for testing in Finland where hopefully we will see our hardwork and dedication start to pay off.

But now it is time to get back to work!

• Author: Natalie Lawton
• Date: September 2nd, 2018

Soldering lessons

Hello peeps! Hola Cristina! El teu germà et troba a faltar! The team is working on the last details to get the experiment build and ready for testing! And we are doing really well!

But today was not just a typical day! Today i got to solder a temperature sensor!! Emil, who i have to congratulate for his patience skills (super important skill if you ask an impatient person like me) was my teacher. After watching him soldering, i got tempted and wanted to try myself. And for a first timer, anyone would agree that i did well! Until i broke a sensor's leg. One out of its eight legs. Who cares, right? No no no (as Emil would say). It was an important one. Thank god we have spares! It's a student's experiment afterall. RIP temp sensor. You did well! I was clumpsy.

So, after my unsuccessful attempt to solder, i went back to my department and did some science! Now that the tubes, which will connect the bags with the manifold, are cut and their lengths are known, it was time to calculate the air that will remain inside them. Some MatLab and graphs later, the results were taken and comparing them with our best and worse case scenarios, the deviation was small! Good thing right? The only thing remaining, is to see how and if this left air, affects our samples.

At this point, to avoid any misunderstanding, Emil was a great teacher! If anytime in the future I decide to solder again, its Emil who i will refer to! Lucky Emil!

• Author: Kyriaki Blazaki
• Date: September 1, 2018

Logistics and suppliers

Imagine this situation, it is two weeks until the trip to the Finnish Meteorological Institute (a one-time chance to carry out a set of multisystem integration tests for 5 days), we start working with the pump tubing for the level 1 of our pneumatic system and a question arise. Are these plastic fittings (the ones that came by default with the pump) good enough to ensure a proper sealing?

Red lights on, email pump supplier, email FMI, email anyone that could get any insight about the situation, cry, pray, stress, two weeks (that fittings were literally dancing over the plastic tubes).

The days pass by, answers arrive, solutions appear, and decisions are taken. We need to order extra metal fittings, wait for the shipping to arrive here, in Kiruna (the bottom of the world), and hope they will fit properly. Oh wait! But these extra fittings will make the pump bigger, will this affect the distribution of the elements inside the structure? Yes, of course, the space was designed for a specific situation. PANIC. Distribution changes, fittings changes, new stuff required. Then, is when you realise how much important are good allies to achieve success in a project.

Sometimes, very small details that you couldn’t foresee cause a ripple effect all over the experiment that may become into big changes and many hours of work. Now, it is one week until the Global testing in FMI, all the components arrived safe and sound and, as you could see in the picture, everything fits perfect!! Thank you very much to Swagelok, our suppliers for all the pneumatic fittings, for all their patience and support, and specially for their efficiency in providing solutions under pressure and with very tight timings.

• Author: Jordi Coll Ortega
• Date: August 31, 2018

AAC system

Hello Teresa and rest of the world! Science team member Kiki is baaaaaack in Kiruna! Time for some BEXUS action! Yesterday i got to meet our baby in person! It was super exciting and love from the first sight!

I put some gloves on (otherwise Jordi bites and you let Natalie down) and helped with the cleaning and the cutting of some tubes. Next task is to cut the tubes that connect the bags with the manifold. But first we have to find out the size of each tube which will be different for each bag since not all of them will have the same distance from the manifold.

Cut, bend if necessary, clean and connect. Repeat for all bags.

Have you noticed the look of the polar bear sticker on Natalie's laptop? I think it approves :D

• Author: Kyriaki Blazaki
• Date: August 24, 2018

Pneumatic Club

The first rule of Pneumatic Club - You do not touch anything with bare hands. The second rule of Pneumatic Club - You do not touch anything with bare hands.

Third rule of Pneumatic Club - Someone blow into a pipe, throw anything to the floor, don’t put the stuff into the clean boxes for the next day, cleaning starts again. Fourth rule - Only screw the fitting once you have triple-checked the schematics.

Fifth rule - IPA is to clean, not to drink, fellas. Sixth rule - No shirts, no shoes, yes gloves.

Seventh rule - Tubing will be cleaned as many times as they have to. And the eighth and final rule - If this is your first day at Pneumatic Club, you have to blogpost about it.

• Author: Jordi Coll Ortega
• Date: August 21, 2018

Sliding Into Place

Feels good to be back! I hope that sliding back into the flow of work in Kiruna will feel as satisfying is it feels seeing the brain cover fit around the frame.

Welcome back, good readers! Having returned to Kiruna, I can present a picture of my own to the growing gallery showing the physical experiment being developed. This part was made by Emil and Erik, so props to them. The boundaries that separated each division's work have now dissolved, leaving us to witness for example, the development of a mechanical structure from the combined effort of members of the electrical and thermal teams!

It seems that Ansyar and I (who returned on the same day) arrived just in time to be present for the next meeting with our mentor. That will be happening in the hour. Things are on track - we have 13 days until some of the group will need to travel to FMI to perform an experiment flushing to see that the hardware responds appropriately. All that remains now is to make sure we all know how what to do.

• Author: Ivan Zankov
• Date: August 20, 2018

We Poor!

Hej! Nuria here after long time without blogging! Summer is almost finished and we haven't even realised how fast it has passed! Well, if you are in Kiruna I would say summer is definitely gone... but in the south, there are still a few weeks left!

During summer our Kiruna team has been building the experiment and that means ordering components and PAYING for them. (Even though we are so lucky to have Emily in our team, The Queen of Sponsorships. THANK YOU EMILY).

As students, our budget was not so big and these last days we realised we are running out of money! (Typical déjà vu for someone I will not mention but SHE will feel identified).

But what next? Don't panic! We still have some back up plan. In case we needed, we are planning to do a crowdfunding. Let's see how much money we can get!

• Author: Núria Agües Paszkowsky
• Date: August 19, 2018

Construction Fever

We now have 15 days remaining until we have to take the experiment to Finland for testing. By this point we need to be essentially built in order to complete these tests properly. What this means for now is we have a lot of contstruction to get done in not very much time.

Luckily a lot of the experiment is starting to take good shape now with the PCB soldered, most of the structure completed and the software getting closer to completion each day.

But we don't have any time to be resting. The pneumatic system is going to take time to complete and we need to be very careful with its construction to ensure it stays as clean as possible. We will also have to ensure we are cutting and bending the tubing with high precision to ensure we get a leak free system.

All in all its going to be a crazy 2 weeks ahead, but we've had crazy weeks before so I'm sure we'll make it ^-^

• Author: Natalie Lawton
• Date: August 18, 2018

Time and Money

Long time no see! I know I have been bad with the blogging part recently but hey, better late than never. The last few weeks, it has been quite stressful for our team even when we passed the IPR session. Reason behind this is we are keep placing new orders for extra and necessary components. Some of these orders are in urgent mode, like our order at Bosch Rexroth. It includes the structure bars for the Brain and sliding blocks for attachment to the gondola. Since we haven’t received these bars yet, we are kind of battling against the time because the Brain needs to be build before we can start having fun and building the pneumatic system.

Every new order means our budget is getting tighter and tighter which is not a positive thing. But luckily the status right now, it looks we can still afford to buy the spare parts for the electronics which is necessary to have it stocked in the lab.

Anyway this was all from me this time, need to go back and placed the order for the last spares now. Let’s hope the bars will get in our hands very soon !!!

• Author: Emily Chen
• Date: August 14th, 2018

Pumped About our New Sponsor KNF

So I'm sure by now you all know about how important the pump is to our experiement. If the pump were to fail then our whole sampling bag system will fail with it. Now we've begun testing and already managed to burn out one Arduino our thoughts began to think more seriously about what would happen if the pump was to break before we even launched.

With that thought in mind we reached out to KNF where we purchased our original pump from. Having already done succesful testing on that pump and from literature we knew it was a good choice and if we were gonna get a back up we wanted one that was exactly the same.

What we love about this pump is how small and lightweight it is, which allows us to fit it into our compact pneumatic system easily, its low power draw, which allows us to sample for longer and more frequently and how well it has been performing in our vacuum chamber tests so far, where we are finding the flow rate is still sufficient for our needs even at stratospheric levels of pressure.

Luckily our friends at KNF also thought our project was interesting and should provide some nice data from the stratosphere so they have kindly supplied us with a backup pump. Now we can all sleep a little easier at night knowing that if we damage the pump during testing the experiment can still go on.

• Author: Natalie Lawton
• Date: August 9th, 2018

Progress is being made

Hi, Emil here again writing to you from the project lab at LTU.

Here in the lab, we are hard at work. Every day some progress is being made. And as you can see from the picture our CAC box is almost ready to fly. It just needs some final touches and all the intrenal components.

By every day that passes by we are getting closer to our deadline. The FMI trip. And by every day that passes the stress is growing larger. Luckily for us we have suport coming to Kiruna soon to help out in the building progress. And hopfully everything will be alright.

Thats todays post, it will have to be a short and easy one since i have to get back to work. Untill next time, Ha de gött!

• Author: Emil Nordqvist
• Date: August 8, 2018

The Heat Wave Lessens

Hello again, good readers! Well, we are now in August - the month where everyone will be coming back to join with the Krew as we prepare for the harrowing September. When that month arrives, I believe I will be one of the first to comment on our progress (assuming no schedule changes).

You may have noticed, if not outright experienced the massive heatwave rolling across all of Europe during the last couple of weeks. If memory serves, I recall North America also getting hit by it. Now considering this is the same year which had the terrifying blizzard sweep across North America and make its presence felt partially in Europe (thankfully not so much in Kiruna), we are definitely feeling the effects of climate change. It’s like we are on the run from some monster, but time is on its side since it’s closing the gap of a head start we have on it from before our industrial revolution. In a sense, we need all the information we can get on exactly what is contributing to this - which includes knowing the proportion of trace gases in our atmosphere and in turn, their concentrations at given altitudes. We are of course, just one group of university students, with only two in our scientific division - but we can still leave a mark by providing in our final SED version a report on our findings in the atmosphere. If our experiment works, the results can bring awareness to the less frequently visited portions of our atmosphere and contribute to existing data on trace gases.

Of course, the scientific aim of our experiment has to contend with the technological side of it because our suitcase-sized box is first a proof of concept, and THEN a tool for atmospheric research. Priority goes to the technology because if it doesn’t work, we get no science anyway. Suddenly, I am very much hoping the Krew is making great advances, because many of us outside the Krew are still not due to return for a couple of weeks!

• Author: Ivan Zankov
• Date: August 7, 2018

Online Power

First of all, I would like to thank our Krew (Kiruna crew) who is building the experiment during this summer period putting a lot of hours and effort.

From southern Europe while getting fried in the sun (f****** global warming!), we try to help them as much as possible. Lately, after the IPR, the Brain design changed as bit and our human brains were all iterating to get (again) the best possible outcome. Also, the electrical interfaces panel were re-located and a new pressure sensor had to fit inside the saturated Brain. Some manufacturing question arose on how to fix the pneumatic interfaces so they don’t move and mess everything up. To do so, and to facilitate the manufacturing process, we exchange drawings by hand which are complemented by text and video-call discussions.

Looking forward to see the experiment late August and be able to still build and fix something!

Cheers!

• Author: Pau Molas Roca
• Date: August 3, 2018

Things are taking shape

So summer has come and gone and so our time is coming to and end to get it done. Since last I have been working on the styrofoam and cutting out all the walls and inside.

Now I am working on attaching the aluminum walls and styrofoam so we can remove the walls with the styrofoam. At the moment the CAC is very close done and ready for FMI.

Thermal wise we have good news that we can test the FMI thermal chamber to see how well it works in cold enviroment.

Stay tuned for more updates on the building from me, until next time!

• Author: Erik Fagerstrom
• Date: August 1, 2018

IPR

Hi everyone, first I want to confess that I am guilty of not writing my blog post according to our schedule. It is better late than never. Let’s get back to the business, the good news is that we have passed the IPR (Integration Progress Review) and now working towards the final stage of the EAR (Experiment Acceptance Review) before the actual flight in October.

The IPR stage has pushed us to lock the design in order to pass the review. As a result, now we can confidently say that all the components required for the building are confirmed and ordered for the final delivery. The team has also started integration of the electronics and software. I believe that it would not be wrong to say all our departments working concurrently on building the experiment.

If everything goes smoothly without any surprises of troubleshooting and disruption, which is hard to realize in the real world, will allow us to complete the building of the experiment in September. This will give us enough time for integration testing otherwise many restless nights are waiting for the team.

This is all from my side today. See you next time. Goodbye! Allahafiz! Hejdå!

• Author: Hamad Siddiqi
• Date: July 31, 2018

Cleaning vol 2

Hej people! It's Kiki again and since some people implied that we are dirty, let's continue talking about cleaning! Last time I talked about the cleaning of the CAC and AAC systems. But what happens with the outside? We have booked a corner (seen in the picture) in the lab that we keep clean and it is where we build the experiment! Looks like that cleanliness is high priority when you manufacture!

How are we gonna do that? Well, the workplace and the tools will be cleaned thoroughly with IPA or aceton before use, while all the team members involved, shall wear powderfree gloves! Standard cleanroom wipes will be used and pressured air, if allowed in the lab.

Every component of the experiment must be wipped off at its ends and parts before assembly. After the completion of the building, flushing the system with IPA/aseton will be necessary. Doing so, any unwanted particles like dust will be removed and any residual grease or oil will be resolved.

Keep the working area free from other people!! (Photo credits to Erik)

• Author: Kyriaki Blazaki
• Date: July 29, 2018

Leak Detector

Hej guys, you know what would be tragic? If we let a small leak in our pneumatic and tubing system completely ruin our sampling. Imagine going through the year long effort of designing and building our experiment only to have the mission fail because of a tiny leak!

But worry not, the folks over at Restek have got us covered and have graciously sponsored us with one of their Electronic Leak Detector!

This is such a fantastic tool that will greatly help us augment the robustness of our experiment and give us absolute confidence that it is leak free and launch ready. Notable features are an audible tone that indicates the severity of a leak, circuitry offering 12 hours of operation between charges, and the ability to detect a broad range of gases - ex rated for use with hydrogen and other explosive gases.

A big thank you to Restek!

• Author: Georges L. J. Labrèche
• Date: July 26, 2018

Work in progress!!

Hello guys. It's me Ansyar again. This week we have finished our IPR presentation and hopefully get a pass from BEXUS coordinator.

Since, last month our team has been working day to night in order to achive the IPR standard. Honestly, I feel jealous of them, because the building and testing part of the project offer a lot of experience to gain from. There are a lot of problems to solve (which are fun), many team activities, interdiciplinary conversation and more.

I can't wait to go back to Kiruna.

• Author: Muhammad Ansyar Rafi Putra
• Date: July 25, 2018

More Tests!

Hej hej! Here is Nuria (late with her blogpost) but with some good news! We recently got confirmation from Rigel Kivi to visit FMI for a second time and do some testing during the first week of September!

But what does this mean for TUBULAR? This will force us to have the experiment almost built for that week, two weeks before the Experiment Acceptance Review so by then, we should be prepared enough to pass. Fingers crossed!

I believe in our Kiruna team! They have all been working really hard during the summer to make this happen!

• Author: Núria Agües Paszkowsky
• Date: July 25, 2018

Looking Skyward

Hello again, good readers! I start this post with a round of applause for my mates back up in Kiruna who just earlier this week endured the IPR! With it being Wednesday as I write this, we have passed it. But did we pass it - that’s the question. The presentation is now history, but what of its implications? Well, a couple of authors before me say there is a hint of good news in the air, so no sense in repeating what they said. We can hope for that pass however - let’s hope.

But aside from that, I also read from other authors that the tests and construction are coming along quite well. Before the presentation this week, we each had our revision tasks for the SED, and I learned how to configure PDFs within a PDF. No joke, I never did this before, so there was some fun in that novelty. Of course with LaTeX, we also had to deal with correctly coded footnotes displaying incorrectly.

But now, we are drawing ever closer to the final leg of the mission before launch - where we will all be back in September working around the clock! Considering how we may be so busy then, I take a moment every few nights to gaze at the night sky through my telescope and enjoy the slow-moving sights of our galaxy.

• Author: Ivan Zankov
• Date: July 25, 2018

Power outage and building

Hi, Emil here. Today it the day before IPR and things are starting to fall in place.

In the electrical team we have spent a lot of time building the whole electronical system on breadboards to be able to show that the component will work as expected. Very soon after we begun building we ran out of breadboards to build on. Luckily there were more to be found!

After we built some of the parts of the electronical system we of course tested them. But to test electronics you usually need electricity which was not that easy to find and LTU today during some hours. Unlucky us had a lightning storm over our heads which struck out all power at LTU for a few hours.

Luckily the power came back, and the testing could continue, in a somewhat cleaner lab. Right now, the state of the electronics feels good for tomorrows IPR and we can rest peacefully. Until next time, Ha de gött!

• Author: Emil Nordqvist
• Date: July 22, 2018

Testing and Failure

So this week we finally got to test the pump in the vacuum chamber with the airflow sensor to try and find out exactly how the flow rate is changing at different altitudes. All we had to do was connect the airflow sensor to the arduino attach the pump to the airflow sensor and stick them in the vacuum chamber, easy right?

Wrong.

From silly human errors like connecting the airflow sensor backwards and forgetting to uncover the pump inlet to software problems in getting the data back Wednesday's test ended in failure. While we were able to fix the human errors easily enough the software was a tougher cookie to crack. Luckily our software team is awesome and managed to produce a fix by Friday morning so we got to go again.

Today we repeated the same tests as Wednesday with much better results. The only problem now is it appears that we have to few data points recorded. So, we can't call today a complete success either... This may sound bad but really its a good thing. This is why we test. To find out what our problems are and to fix them so they don't happen in flight. Our next plan is implementing a timer into the data logger and running the airflow sensor and pump for an extended time on the bench and see if we run into similar problems. But for now is time to stop writing blogposts and to get back to work ^-^

• Author: Natalie Lawton
• Date: July 20, 2018

Gustafus of Söftware

Hejsan. Today it is I Gustafus Dryssenson of the land of söftware speaking to you. It have been ä very busy week.

Every morning I wake up before the sunrises, which is quite the task when one lives in the time of the midnight sun, and go down to the mine. Once åll the things that need to be mined that shift have been mined I still cannot rest for BEXUS never sleeps.

I go immediately from work to the university where I find my most åmazing, wonderful, smart, clever and funny team members and we get to wårk. The länd of söftware is not always a happy place, sometimes evil things called bugs appear and sometimes when öne defeats one bug three more appear in its place.

However as long as one does not give up the evil bugs can be slain and söftware land returned to peace. Now I must go back to my duties expanding the land of söftware by conquering the lands of pump, sensorer and heäters and helping the land of söftware to know how to deal with the natural disasters of SD card loss, cömmunication loss and re-sets.

• Author: Gustafus "NL" Dryssenson
• Date: July 20, 2018

Styrofoam has arrived lets get going

Hello Erik is back with some fun thermal news.

This week the styrofoam have been bought and tested. First now that the styrofoam is here I can start with manufacturing of the walls. Soon the IPR and what else to work hard and produce something good to present.

As well the Styrofoam have been vacuum tested. A 10x10x5cm piece were put in the vacuum test chamber and brought down to 5hPa for 5min. It had not expanded or contracted and that is a good result. One more test will be done for a longer while so we can confirm it works for a long time as well.

Stay tuned for more updates later on how the work is going!

• Author: Erik Fagerstrom
• Date: June 19, 2018

Yassssss

One of our most awaited component is finally here! Today we received the stainless steel tube from SilcoTek that we have been longed for a looooooooooooong time. At first we thought it will come at the end of this week or be delayed to the IPR week ( if we were super unlucky). But it surprisingly turned up today and made the situation much better for us to prepare for the IPR which is next Monday.

This means we can now officially start building the pneumatic system and connect the tube to the sponsored Swagelok fittings.

Let the fun begin! \(^-^)/

• Author: Emily Chen
• Date: July 18, 2018

Race Against Time

Hej people, Georges here eagerly refreshing the parcel tracking page for our awesome inert Sulfinert treated stainless steel tubing. This amazingly inert tubing is manufactured, sponsored, and sent to us by the folks over at SilcoTek. Thank you guys!

We've already accepted that we won't receive it early enough that we could do anything with it for our fast approaching Integration Progress Review (IPR) but... maybe? Most likely not... but maybe?

As you can see from the parcel tracking page screenshot, there seems to be progress made as it has shipped from "Malmö, Sweden" to just "Sweden."

It's the little parcel that could. I believe in you!

• Author: Georges L. J. Labrèche
• Date: July 17, 2018

The bag and the vacuum chamber.

Hello people! Long time no see! It's the science team member Kiki and today I am going to introduce you to our very first test. But first I have to admit that I am sad that I miss all the fun, building the experiment with my teammates! Back to the point now.

In the picture, you see a sampling bag posing inside a vacuum chamber. Its actual goal was to test the pump's performance at low pressures but we also took the chance to see how our beautiful bags behave. Some bags were fully filled and some others were half empty while one bag was not so lucky. It was filled with air continuously until it was burst! RIP our lovely bag! Your contribution to our test was precious! The team honored the bag with several pictures of it, in the SED document (Test 30, Appendix O)! You will be remembered forever!

This test was a success and gave the team many instructive lessons !! The pump works perfectly under a low-pressure environment. The test made clear how important is the careful emptying of the bags, since even a little amount of air that is left inside, is enough to half-fill the bag before even start the sampling! What is more, the half-filled bags in a low-pressure environment, when the vacuum chamber was opened, were almost empty! So, it is crucial to sample the right amount of air in order to assure that we have enough sample left for analysis!

That's all for now! xxx <3

• Author: Kyriaki Blazaki
• Date: July 16, 2018

Orders

Hi everyone! Reporting plus 25 degrees Celsius live here from Kiruna. The tubular team staying in Kiruna is enjoying some of the best summer days in the North. I think the better weather conditions affecting the postal services as well since the ordered packages are arriving daily.

So far, many of the mechanical components arrived and the delivery of the electrical components is completed which means the electrical team has started the component level testing. And soon going to start the integration testing with our software team. The integration level testing, especially with the pump, valves and all the sensors, is necessary for the IPR.

This is it from my side today. Hope you guys are also enjoying the summer. Goodbye! Allah Hafiz! Ha det bra! Vi Ses!

• Author: Hamad Siddiqi
• Date: July 13, 2018

Discussion Before the IPR

Hello again, good readers! Having since safely returned from Sardinia, I am back on the grid. Let’s see what has happened recently…

Yesterday was when we had as group TUBULAR agreed for there to be an appointment with our mentors - and boy oh boy could it not have come soon enough! The PCB and inline pressure sensor were the only two components not yet in our possession - the PCB having not yet been ordered. The schematics are what will be due very soon, and they can still be done with a rough estimation of the PCB in mind, as the big picture is going to be far more important during the presentation. The meeting itself involved PM Natalie, and everyone not currently present in Kiruna, as those who were would likely be busy directly building the experiment.

But other than this concern about electrical plans and layouts, the other divisions are still managing to hold out without too much lag, so the deadlines should be met. As a collective group, I think we can really pull this off!

• Author: Ivan Zankov
• Date: July 12, 2018

How we coordinate

Hello from Indonesia!! It's me Ansyar, the most handsome South East Asian person in Kiruna. (kidding lol)

If you guys follow our previous posts, you will notice that most of our members are in Kiruna this summer (including me). So, how do we continue the work?

In software team, we keep in touch using social media, such as Whatsapp or FB. When Gustav wants to do some software test or validation, he will notify me and i will also join via skype or WA call. Therefore, I can also contribute in solving problem that might arise. FYI, we are gonna do some validation tomorrow or day after tomorrow. So, let's see if we can manage to do live video call during the validation.

That's it for today post. See you next time!!

• Author: Muhammad Ansyar Rafi Putra
• Date: July 11, 2018

Components are here

Hi all! Emil back to doing blogposts again!

If you read my last blogpost, you might now that I was eagerly waiting for the components that we ordered to arrive. Well, now they have finally arrived! At least some of them and we can finally start testing!

I don't know if we have mentioned it in previous posts but one of the concerns in the electrical system was the power supply. We are using two dc to dc converters in parallel which was the source of some concerned since it was not obvious that it would work.

Now that we finally got the dc to dc converters it was one of the first things we decided to test. Luckily the first test confirms that is works! Yay! Now there is just all the other tests left to do which hopefully will come back with the same results. Until next time, Ha de gött!

• Author: Emil Nordqvist
• Date: July 9, 2018

It's Coming Home

This week has been a week filled with good news, not only have all of our parts started to arrive in Kiruna but England have been winning the football for once ^0^ Next up we face Crotia on the day I arrive back to Kiruna. Who knows if we can win but its been a fun ride.

Now that everything has started to arrive the next phase of the project truly begins. Obviously the first thing that comes to mind is building but before we all get carried away with excitement at piecing TUBULAR together we can't forget we have to test everything every step of the way.

Luckily we already have some vacuum testing secured so we can check out our valves, sensors and arduino in low pressure as well as the pump. Hopefully this testing will go jsut as well as our initial pump vacuum testing and everything will work as planned. But if it doesn't by testing early we have left plenty of time to make things work!

So lets hope that all the TUBULAR parts arrive home in Kiruna soon and that the football arrives home in England too!

• Author: Natalie Lawton
• Date: July 7, 2018

Pump requirements

Erik from thermal back again with new figures. One of the hardest requirements were to keep the pump above 5 degrees for the whole flight. How to check that you ask without trying.

Simulations in ANSYS and MATLAB, as seen in my image is two lines of data taken from the ANSYS simulations that have been done. In between the vertical dotted lines it is above 15km. Have chosen that because we start sample soon after and at 15km it is almost 15 percent of air density left. So assumptions of no air inside can be made.

With how it is built now it should be able to run and sample at low altitude (Air in the Brain line) and at high altitude (No air in the Brain line). Now it is just to test during summer to verify it works!

• Author: Erik Fagerstrom
• Date: July 6, 2018

I hate FAT32 people

I hate FAT32, there I said it... Wooh, it feels nice to get that off my chest. Before you judge me let me explain my opinion with one simple statement. In the world of filsystems, not all of them are created equal. FAT32 is not a good filsystem period. Why on Earth does the SD association continue to make FAT the recommended file system for SDcards? FAT32 (and FAT16) can't even save files larger than 4GiB. *Dial-up modem screeching*, whats this? The ninties are sending us an electronic mail to us. They want their shitty filesystem back.

In today world we have new filesystems that allows us to save larger files. Features like journaling gives us better corruption resistant memorys. Things like this are standard in modern filesystems. Yet you have FAT that lingers as an old horse begging to be put out of it's misery.

Please join me in abolishing FAT, spread the word so our children may never see FAT and the horror it brings.

• Author: Gustav Dyrssen
• Date: July 5, 2018

You shall not pass!

One of the biggest issues that came with the CDR’s feedback was the conductive heat paths from the gondola to our experiment. Since the required operational temperature of the electronics and pneumatic components is much higher than the outside temperature at 25km of altitude, a proper insulation is a must to minimize failure risks.

However, in our previous design, the direct contact between the gondola and the aluminum structure of the boxes was working as a huge heat sink that decreased our thermal control system efficiency below ground.

To avoid this, a bunch of rubber bumpers will defend our experiment from the artic cold environment like Gandalf against the Balrog in Moria. To not keep our experiment “floating” attached to this new interface bumpers, Styrofoam bars will be screwed to the rails of the structure in-between the gondola and the bottom of the boxes, providing insulation and a base support to reduce the stress in the fixations.

• Author: Jordi Coll Ortega
• Date: July 4, 2018

AAC and CAC cleaning.

Hello people! Hope you are doing fine! Today I'll talk about the cleaning of the AAC and CAC systems. Did you think that we will send our experiment dirty to fly?

The CAC system, the coiled tube will be flushed and filled with a fill gas. A fill gas is air with a spike of a known gas, for example CO. In the flushing process the two edges of the CAC will be connected to the fill gas bottle and Picarro analyzer respectively. A fill gas will then flow through the coiled tube all the way to the Picarro. It will be flushed over night to ensure unknown gases inside the tube will be removed. Then the two CAC edges will be sealed while the gas is still running through the CAC and therefore the CAC will be filled. Thereafter it will be attached to remaining components such as the magnesium perchlorate filter, and the solenoid valve. At this stage the CAC is ready for the flight.

The cleaning procedure for the AAC system is a little bit more complicated! All the bags will be cleaned by flushing them with a dry gas the night before the flight. The dry gas is extracted from the fill gas and has slightly different concentrations from the fill gas. The dry gas bottle, the vacuum pump and the AAC system, will all be connected as a system to the central valve, as seen in the picture. Using the AAC valves and the bags manual valve to control which bags are sealed and which are opened the process will go through each bag individually. The central valve's position (which you can see in the picture) will determine whether the dry gas or the vacuum is open. When the valve is open to dry gas the sampling bags are being filled and when it is open to vacuum they are being emptied. The flushing has to be done three times for each bag to ensure the bags are properly cleaned. After the end of this procedure, when the bags are empty again, each bag will be sealed, by closing its valve, while the vacuum pump is open. The bags are clean and ready to take off!

Not as boring as cleaning your house, right?!

• Author: Kyriaki Blazaki
• Date: July 4, 2018

Picarro G2401

Hej! Today I would like to introduce you a key component for team TUBULAR. The PICARRO G2401 analyzer owned by FMI. It uses near-infrared Cavity Ring Down Spectroscopy (CRDS) technology and is capable of measuring four atmospheric trace gases simultaneously and continuously (CO, CO2, CH4, H2O).

Once it is set up and with the help of some calibrating gases, the Picarro analyzer is easy to use. Just connect your sample to the Picarro inlet and use another gas or a vacuum pump to introduce the sample into the analizer's cavity where a laser beam is used to determine amounts of concentration.

The second picture shows the Picarro Graphical User Interface but it does not only give information about the displayed parameters, all the data is saved in a .dat file to be analyzed afterwards. The most relevant logged parameters are time, date, ambient pressure, cavity pressure, cavity temperature, CO concentration, CO2, CH4 and H2O normal and dry concentration.

The conclusion is a lot of numbers to analyze! Looking forward to it!

• Author: Núria Agües Paszkowsky
• Date: July 3, 2018

Say hi to Fika!

Hej people, Georges here introducing you to Team TUBULAR's most important member. Her name is Fika and she's the goodest mascot, yes she is!

Fika is a rescue mascot, I found her abandonned next to some garbage containers in downtown Kiruna. Twas early Spring, I remember that fateful day as if it were yesterday.

The cruelty of her previous owners is unforgivable, shame on them! But worry not, she's all healed now, both physically as well as emotionally, and now has a loving home at our Space Campus workshop where Team TUBULAR has been tending to all her needs with unprecedented love!

Thank you for your love, Fika. We love you.

• Author: Georges L. J. Labrèche
• Date: July 3, 2018

Real Life Experience

Hej people, Georges here and I'm here to talk to you about real life experience!

This summer I'm working at the European Space Agency (ESA) in Frascati, near Rome, as part of their traineeship programme at the Future Systems Department for the Copernicus Programme. It's super cool!

My day to day work revolves around a satellite mission that will be launched in Q2 2019. It just recently passed the Preliminary Design Review (PDR). What is that you say, PDR? Doesn't this sound familiar? Yes! It's exactly the same process we go through in the REXUS/BEXUS programme! You guys, this is why REXUS/BEXUS is awesome. It really reflects the actually work environment at an organization like ESA. So Cool! As soon as I started working here I was already familiar with all the lingo and process thanks to REXUS/BEXUS. Hoorah!

So, what I'm trying to say here is that as students of space industry related fields we should really get invovled in as many projects as we can to get familiar with the realy life work environment, it's worth it! I'm eternally grateful to the REXUS/BEXUS programme for the experience it has provided me with. You can also do it!

• Author: Georges L. J. Labrèche
• Date: July 1, 2018

FIFA girl back again

Yesterday was a sad day for a football fangirl like me because both Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are out from this FIFA World Cup. I’m both heartbroken and sad. All I can say the winner team was indeed better and had also the luck on theirs side. The majority of the supporters are assuming that this may be the last World cup for those two legends and I fear it might be true. But on the bright side, somehow the swedish team manage to move on to the knockout phase, which I was pretty surprised over. Let’s hope they won’t be stuck at this phase! HEJA SVERIGE!

On the other hand, regarding the TUBULAR project, we are still stuck at this boring waiting phase. The Swagelok fittings are estimated to be arriving next week, which means we can SOOOOOON start building the pneumatic system. But before that we also need to wait for the stainless steel tube to arrive.... so that means we can still keep watching the World Cup before the serious building session starts.

For those who doesn’t watch the World Cup, enjoy your summer to maximum! =)

• Author: Emily Chen
• Date: July 1, 2018

The Trebuchet

Welcome back, good readers! Now, I am writing to you from Alghero, a port town on the western side of Sardinia. Since just after the point when I last posted, I have been off the grid for nearly the entire time, having only turned on my phone a couple of days ago to read up on the group chats to make sure I was not personally needed. Because of my current passive position, nothing BEXUS-related has happened on my end, but a great deal is happening back in Sweden (I assume)! At this moment, the building phase is in motion, and the mechanical team is actively taking in all of the considerations from every other department in our group - especially team thermal.

Because team mechanical will be closely working with us at this point, I feel now is an especially important time to send some recognition in their direction in the form of this beautiful device I came across facing out toward the Mediterranean Sea. This trebuchet is an example of some of the earliest long-range ballistic warfare devices that was used in Europe. We had at one point passed a church whose construction dated back 900 years ago, meaning that this town would likely be at least around the same age, if not older. That could make this particular weapon nearly 1000 years old! All this talk of early warfare when I was just on about sending praise - but the real beauty here is in its design and operation, rather than its history. This is quite literally an elevated teeter-totter with baskets on both of the shaft’s ends. It was developed so that once a projectile is prepped for launch in the extended basket, that a substantially heavier weight would then be released into the inner main basket, causing the shaft connecting the two to swing the smaller of the weights up and over the device. From there, the projectile would be released in the direction the trebuchet was facing - and any enemy in its path. I am sure that when this structure was invented, there was a similar mechanical team at work - and their contribution really speaks for itself!

Oh yeah, and apparently, Alghero was also inhabited by a Catalan population, so there are still elements of the culture present in this otherwise Italian island - including a TV channel!

• Author: Ivan Zankov
• Date: June 29, 2018

Summer

Hi guys! Summer is going on in its full swing and I am saying this because Bexus team while waiting for its components to arrive is relaxing so much that even some of us have started to forget to keep you guys updated.

I hope you guys understand that everyone needs some time off to relax. Recent update regarding electrical team is that all the electronics have been ordered. According to our project supervisor, the components should arrive next week which means the actual building of the experiment will start soon.

This is all from me today. Enjoy the summer time. Goodbye! Allahafiz! Hejdå!

• Author: Hamad Siddiqi
• Date: June 28, 2018

Communication

Hi all! Emil back to doing double blogposts again! As you might have figured from the plural in the last post.

Communication is always a huge part in all projects. Even if you only are two persons doing the project. For us in TUBULAR, the communication have gotten somewhat of a problem. Atleast in my opinion.

Curently we are communication through chat. Which worked fine when everyone was in Kiruna and you could talk to everyone. But now when a large portion of the team is abroad and some of us in Kiruna are working there is typicaly 100 messages to read after work. These are ofcourse all out of order and there is 10 different sunjects being discussed at once. For now this have not led to any major problems. But i fear that some critical information might get lost.

I personaly don't have a quick and easy fix to this. But we should probably make some kind of communications plan and move over some parts to email or some other service in which one can devide the topics that are used. There are several solutions to this problem. The question is just what is easiest to move over to since i supsect that most people are quite used to way things work now. I might update you in the future on what we did about this, but until then, Ha de gött!

• Author: Emil Nordqvist
• Date: June 27, 2018

Waiting for the splash

Hi all! Emil back to doing blogposts again!

As you might have understod by Natalies post, the project is on most parts quite calm with a lot of waiting to sitt through at the moment. We are currently waiting for all the products that has been orderd to arive so that we can start building.

I don't know about you but for me atleast there is something extreamly satisfying about opening boxes that comes with the mail. For me this sometimes leads to some unhealthy amount of internet shoping of unnecessary things just to have packages to open. But luckily for me there will soon be a big splashdown of components ariving and it will feel like christmas again!

As soon as all these components arive life will(finaly) get hectic again! No more chill! No more spare time! Im looking forward to it! You should probably remind me that i typed these words when im tierd of building. Talking about being tierd of doing things, im now tiered of this blogpost(i might have a short attention span) so i will leave you with this. Ha de gött!

• Author: Emil Nordqvist
• Date: June 27, 2018

The Calm Before the Storm

After the craziness of the CDR and the scramble that followed to make sure we were still on track we finally completed one of our key goals, ordering the bulk of the parts. With so many last minute changes coming in it was not an easy task to get the mechanical, thermal and electrical order lists sorted. Even now we still have a few outstanding items, but at least for these ones we have a game plan now.

We of course have to keep giving shout outs to all our amazing component sponsors, SMC, Swagelok, Restek, Silcotek, Teknolab, without their expert knowledge, advice and enthusiasm to help us realise our project we would be in a sticky situation right now >.<

So for now the waiting game begins. With a relatively quiet period upon us we're working hard to make sure our SED is up to date with all the feedback we got from CDR and making sure any last design niggles are sorted out. We've also been booking in our first tests to make sure we get the dates secured.

We know as soon as the first parts start rolling in the door life's going to go crazy again, so we want to make sure we're ready for it. And until then I'll be in my bed catching up on some much needed sleep ^^'

• Author: Natalie Lawton
• Date: June 24, 2018

How to fasten Styrofoam

Summer, summer, summer they say. Well except a short evening with above 10 degrees it has been raining the whole week. I am hoping the team members that have left Kiruna might have seen the sun and can share it.

What to do except dress properly. Layer upon layer of clothes. That we shall do with the experiment to keep it warm, aluminum and Styrofoam to keep the inside safe from the harsh Kiruna outside.

The last week it has been discussion how to fasten the Styrofoam. Some of the ideas is to use plastic screws from the outside, have 90 degrees angles on the inside from the frame to make a slot for the Styrofoam and lastly use thread from the frame on the inside tying it stuck.

What sounds the best in keeping it in place and not any holes in the styrofoam to have heatbridges to the outside. As seen in the picture we are tying it to the fram! Well that was the latest news from thermal, keep it cool!

• Author: Erik Fagerstrom
• Date: June 23, 2018

A midsummer night dream

Today is midsummer eve. The longest day of the year in the northen hemisphere. Also the time of year swedes (and other people) dance around a huge phallus. The church might say that its a cross with the sun and moon and that is a celebration of life. But in truth it's and old pagan fertility ceremony. So yeah, we have small children dancing and singing songs around a huge penis that is meant to secure a rich harvest.

The weather of course on midsummer is dreadful, with a high chance of rain and even the occasionall hail. Even if the sun is above the horizon up here forget about seeing it, because you ain't gonna see it.

Wise organisers will have planned their dinners indoors or if you want to be outside atleast have a large partytält that can protect you against against the elements.

• Author: Gustav Dyrssen
• Date: June 22, 2018

Kage bunshin no jutsu

Hi all! I’m delighted to introduce you our new half-member of the team, Idroj. I flew back home two days ago, but since IPR is around the corner I felt the duty to not completely abandon my mates in Kiruna while I am enjoying Catalan beaches and mountains. In the picture you can see how mad he became when I told him I was leaving home without him.

I would like to say that my skills in duplicate myself are a bit in lack of use, but he is completely functional. Apparently, he has been struggling with thermal members about how to avoid the heat bridges of our experiment with the gondola and how to attach the insulation Styrofoam to the structure. Ropes, screws, Velcro, glue … many options seem to be on the table but only one will be the winner. Wait until the next episode to read about the updates in the subject!

Damn, I really hope his head doesn’t explode after that much work he is doing.

• Author: Jordi Coll Ortega
• Date: June 21, 2018

Feels good to be back home!

Hello people or as you would say in Greek, geia sas! Almost two weeks ago, I left Kiruna to come home with a bittersweet feeling as I told you but at the end, it feels so nice to be back home!

The only thing that gave me hard time was the temperature. From the cold Kiruna with 6 degrees to the boiling Kreta with 35 degrees! So, as you can imagine I spend most of my day at the beach and most of my nights strolling around with friends!

In BEXUS news, there is some SED polishing to do. At home or at the beach, it doesn't matter as soon as you get some work done.

For the team members back in Kiruna, who are doing a great job building the experiment and making the last orders, don't listen to me.. It's all lies! It's terrible here.. TOO HOT! I would rather be there with you! luv u all <3

• Author: Kyriaki Blazaki
• Date: June 20, 2018

Going Home

Hej people! Here a lost member of Science on her way home! Today was a stressful day missing trains, freaking out and of course trying to find hidden plugs in the airport because I cannot forget my BEXUS responsibilities!

Can't wait for REAL summer and some darkness! However, BEXUS can never be forgotten... so I might soon find myself working on the beach!

Hope all the TUBULAR members are enjoying in Kiruna or their respective places around the world! See you soon!

• Author: Núria Agües Paszkowsky
• Date: June 19, 2018

Waiting ...

Olé, Olé, Olé, Olé, it’s FIFA world cup time!!! I guess I’m not the only one who is watching the matches right? Today Sweden was against South Korea and won with 1-0. I’m so proud and happy for them and our country! Even through that goal was made through a penalty, but a goal is still a goal. Theirs next match will be against Germany and I have a feeling it will be tough but let’s hope the luck is on our side!

Anyway back to real business...The process in the mechanical team is going forward but slowly. As I said in last post, we have started to receive some ordered items but not all have arrived yet so we are still a bit in the waiting phase. And as for today, I have sent our final shopping list to our sponsor Swagelok regarding the desired tube fittings to AAC and CAC. I hope we will receive it within two weeks so we can start building the sampling system which is necessary for the IPR.

Well, this was all from me this time! I’m going to prepare myself for the next match which is England vs Tunisia. Who do you think will win? Leave us a message hehehe!

• Author: Emily Chen
• Date: June 18, 2018

SilcoTek Coated Tubing

Hej people, looks like we have a new sponsor on board... Many thanks to the folks over at SilcoTek!

SilcoTek are THE guys to go to for corrosion resistance and chemical inertness coating that performs in the most challenging material applications. They will provide us with the tubes we need for the air sampling system that will connect our pump to our sampling bags.

If the air samples we collect chemically react with our experiment's material then our samples are pretty much worthless. What a catastrophe that would be! This means that inertness is a big deal and Sulfinert coating from SilcoTek will make sure our samples remain pure.

What we're getting exactly is 50ft of Welded/Drawn 304 Grade Stainless Steel Tubing (Sulfinert Treated). This coated tubing is fantastic for inert applications. Sulfinert is a required treatment for metal components when analyzing for parts-per-billion levels of organo-sulfur compounds. Wow!

• Author: Georges L. J. Labrèche
• Date: June 17, 2018

The Green and the Danube

Hello again, good readers! Twelve days sure pass by quickly, don’t they? Last Tuesday, I left Kiruna to return to civilization to finally get started on my own recharging. I’m writing from Vienna, Austria, where there are plenty of green parks mixed in between the dense urban areas! After tending to a few of my tasks for SED v3.0, I decided to go for a bike ride out along the Danube river! It definitely was one of those feelings you simply can’t get enough of when you find yourself otherwise intensely involved in large projects - especially those involving many people!

So, with many of us now scattered back across the globe as we were prior to BEXUS, communication becomes of the utmost importance! Trouble is, it is also the easiest thing to forget when you find yourself suddenly not living in the area you’ve always associated with BEXUS work (Kiruna), and instead find yourself in the area you associate with chilling out over the summer! (I am from Bulgaria originally, but I have immediate family living here, so Vienna is pretty much “home” for me.) In spite of that, I finally made it a point today to read every message that had been sent over our group chat since my departure, and noted the feedback documents we received following the CDR presentation made by my colleagues - to know what to do next in improving the SED as a response to said feedback! For me, it’s mostly going to be checking if certain document sections drag on for too long over minute technological or scientific details that may be better suited to go in their respective appendices. Other than that, it’s mostly more updates to thermal properties! Yay!

What I do know is that I will be off the grid from the 20th until the first of July, but with my next blogpost day falling within that time frame, I guess I will still need to bring a laptop!

• Author: Ivan Zankov
• Date: June 16, 2018

EID

Hello dear readers, it’s the most special day for me not because of my birthday today. But because of the EID, for those who don’t know about it, it’s the day which Muslims celebrate after fasting for the whole month of Ramazan by eating lots of delicious food, sweets and get-togethers with the family and friends.

So far, I am celebrating this day by taking the bus at 8 o’clock in the morning, doing my breakfast with a cup of coffee and chocolate, meeting the project supervisor, and attending a presentation in the university. Still, a lot of day is left and the life is full of surprises. So, guys, I am optimistic for the more cheerful time ahead and of course about our project as well.

Thank you for visiting us on a very special day and becoming a part of it. Goodbye, Allahafiz, hejdå! Och ha en bra dag!

• Author: Hamad Siddiqi
• Date: June 15, 2018

Forgeting to post

Hey again, Emil here returning with yet another punishment post!

Time have moved so quickly since my last post so I (agian) totaly forgot to post yesterday. I think I have started a trend of forgeting to post. Or maybe i just like to write blogposts.

For me this week has been hectic. I started at my summer work at Essrange and I have had a lot to learing to do and at the same time I'm trying to keep up with all the work that need to be done in TUBULAR. Currently we in the electrical department have been locking down the last few parts that we need to order. I think i mentioned this in my last blogpost, but as always we keep discovering new problems. Although it's better to discover them now rather than later.

It's quite stressfull to still find details that might compromise the misson. Although as some smart person once said, you don't learn anything from doing right, you learn from your mistakes. Untill next time, ha de gött!

• Author: Emil Nordqvist
• Date: June 14, 2018

Hoodies Are Here

Hey again, Emil here with happy news!

The hodies that we created for all the TUBULAR team members has arived(finaly)! We have all been waiting for these with high expectations and i have to say that they turned out great! Personaly i was not in the project at the hoodies design was developed and honestly didn't know what they would look like at all. Im supper happy how they turned out though!

Most of the team is not in Kiruna now so some of the members will have to wait until they get theirs. It just adds some extra motivation for them to come back up to Kiruna to help us build!

For today i will keep my post short and untill next time, ha de gött!

• Author: Emil Nordqvist
• Date: June 14, 2018

Dedication

Hai from Indonesia.

Yes, currently I'm at my home country for the whole summer. However, I cannot abandon the workload of BEXUS. We have SED deadline due in 2-3 weeks, and IPR at the end of July. The team members who stay in Kiruna are working hard nowadays to build the experiment worth for IPR. Eventhough I'm more than 10k km away from them. I still need to contribute, mostly in SED. Work hard, play hard!!

Have a nice summer all. Daahh!! (Byee!!)

• Author: Muhammad Ansyar Rafi Putra
• Date: June 14, 2018

Vacation

Hej people!!!!

Finally home. Enjoy my place, hanging out with friends, wokring in my father's streaming company, starting my company with my brother, doing lots of sport and of course...

Introducing the changes suggested during our fruitful CDR two weeks ago in ESTEC. So polishing detail and solving doubts from our team memebers still in Kiruna.

Ciao ciao!

• Author: Pau Molas Roca
• Date: June 12, 2018

Already Wondering if 150 Patches was Enough

Around 10 days ago we got a very exciting shipment of 150 TUBULAR patches. It's kind of weird and also pretty cool to see your own logo in 3D format and understandably everyone and their mum wanted one which leads us to where we are now with an amazing 91 out of 150 patches already gone in only 10 days!

Those of you who are quick with maths will know that leaves us ith only 59 patches remaining. Only 59 more lucky people who get to hold a piece of TUBULAR and REXUS/BEXUS history forever. Will one of those 59 be you?

It's also fun to consider where all these patches will end up in the world. With such an international teams one thing we can be sure of is that the name TUBULAR will be known worldwide with patches heading for places as far as Pakistan and Indonesia. Though according to Google the furthest place away from Kiruna is Terra Nova Bay in Antartica where the Italian Mario Zucchelli Station is located, with our old project manager Georges currently working in Italy maybe he can find a way to get a TUBULAR patch to the furthest point away from home.

But with all this good news about the patches finally arriving there's still one question on every team members lips. Where are the hoodies? The answer to that is hopefully within the next few days! So stay tuned to check out our new wardrobe when it finally arrives.

• Author: Natalie Lawton
• Date: June 11, 2018

Preperation and excitment

Hej, Erik from thermal here again. After a week of vacation from BEXUS until the feedback had arrived it is time to start again. For us in thermal we managed pretty well with only suggestions to look into and possible improve.Some of the tasks will be identifying hotspots, look into if we shall paint the experiment, see what heatbridges there is and how it will affect.

So for now we have a little to do before the IPR, nothing that we can not handle. Hopefully things will start to arrive soon and I am way to excited to start building. It is the most fun part, after spending months preparing, calculating, designing and simulating to finally build.

Other than BEXUS will I do something fun vacation wise? Ofc! I will be working as most of the other members that stays in Kiruna this summer. Will be spending my time at Esrange working, fun part about being there is I can see the launch pad where we will be releasing our experiment in october. I am just getting more excited about that it shall soon be us standing there launching.

Have a nice summer and as you can see in this image summer is over in Kiruna or shall start were confusing when walking to the buss this last thursday (7/6). Until next time stay cool!

• Author: Erik Fagerstrom
• Date: June 10, 2018

Mine Saturday post

Work proceeds at pace after the CDR, and now we have been given a pass. Which is great, but now our team have scattered in the wind to all corners in the world. Today we had our meeting with the remaining members in Kiruna. We processed the feedback from the CDR and split them up into tasks like good little worker bees we are. Some of us decided to a teambuilding exercise afterwards, i.e going to the cinema.

On Monday I will start my summer job at the LKAB mine which I look forwards to. Well see how I will handle a full time job and BEXUS during the summer, I think I can manage to juggle two balls at the same. I picked up my ID card the other day and it has the same picture as last years, meaning it's me but clean shaven haha. I really enjoyed working at the mine last year, it wasn't to demanding. One small downside was the shift work. Some weeks you worked day others you worked night, some handle it others don't. One funny thing was that one gets payed extra during the night even if the sun is still up...

That covers most things that has happened this week I believe. See y'all next time.

• Author: Gustav Dyrssen
• Date: June 9, 2018

Mecatching-up ...

Hello all, it’s been a while since you don’t read any serious blog about mechanics and the structure of our child, so maybe it’s a good time to catch up and explain you a bit about what’s going on. Otherwise you may think we are all day messing around and whether that was true, no one should know so let this be our secret.

In the last episode, we were still working on computer analysis software stuff checking that the structure would stand all the loads of the flight. Since then many days have passed (at least in the calendar, you know the psycho-Sun here in Kiruna doesn’t give a shit if you want to sleep sometimes), and we moved on to hands-on work. Without going any further, two days ago the summer-resistance mechanical team did a wonderful tour across some local Kiruna companies to order the last components for the structure, namely the aluminium walls and the insulation styrofoam.

Moreover (another secret that must stay here), we were that sure about our design that we ordered most of the structure components before the CDR! (Thanks to Bosch Rexroth for that super cool 45% discount they gave us!) Luckily, we got a super PASS and only minor changes had to be implemented, so we are on track.

Finally, I really hope that the blog picture was click-bite enought to get you until here. By now I’m just waiting for the components to arrive while looking for a Master Thesis topic/Internship/opportunity. If any reader is interested or has a brillant idea in mind, you can contact me whenever you want through my email (jordicoll.28@gmail.com) or clicking on my name down here. I’m a great engineer, you won’t be disappointed!

• Author: Jordi Coll Ortega
• Date: June 8, 2018

P vs NP Problem.

Hej mina vänner! It's Kiki and today is my last day in Kiruna. For the next 2 months at least! I was looking forward to this day, to go home, see my family and friends and take a taste of REAL summer. But now that this day is finally here, I have a bittersweet feeling and I am actually sad that I am leaving Kiruna! I know that most of you won't believe me! But I'll be back, right?

Coming to uni today, I run into Gustav from the software team. We talked a little bit about his job at the mine and I told him how I am planning to spend my summer, which can be summarized into 3 words- Beach, Sun, and Fun! And Bexus of course!!

For some reason though, he thought that I will be bored, and told me, or to be precise, challenged me to solve the P vs NP Problem! Yeah, I had the same puzzled face as you. I googled it, didn't understand much BUT the interesting thing is the prize. One million dollars! Can you imagine how many Aircore and bags could we fly with one million dollars?

The science team has your back, TUBULAR people! Challenge accepted Gustav! Prepare your wallets!

• Author: Kyriaki Blazaki
• Date: June 7, 2018

After a Storm Comes a Calm

Hi everyone! Last week some of the members of TUBULAR were in ESTEC for our CDR which means that we all work crazily during the previous weeks. Now after the CDR storm we are all in a chilling period waiting for all the material that has been ordered to start building. The excitement of the team when we receive something is always priceless... Just yesterday we received our cool patches and I hope by the end of the week we get the hoodies as well.

But... What to do meanwhile? How to keep you entertained? I just found in between my pictures from the FMI trip something I would like to share with you. Do you see that weird thing hanging on the wall? It is the AirCore sampler! The AirCore sampler consists of a tube divided in fifteen stages.

As you might know, the AirCore samples air and it has to be analysed as soon as possible in order to minimise the loss of resolution. The more we wait to analyse, the more the gas mixes. The AirCore sampler is connected to the end of the Picarro analyser, so after the analysis, the sample is not wasted, it is kept in this sampler. Once the sample has been introduced, the fifteen valves close separating the sample in fifteen different levels and avoiding further mixing which makes possible future analysis (less precise though).

• Author: Núria Agües Paszkowsky
• Date: June 6, 2018

Time for some actions

Good news, good news, good news!! We finally received our structure bars from Bosch Rexroth that we ordered two weeks ago. More items from them are also coming within these fews weeks. It is also planned that we will soon go out to town and buy the aluminum sheet and styrofoam that will be our walls in our experiment.

As mentioned in my previous post, I’m kinda the sponsor hunter in TUBULAR. The best deal offer we got from Bosch Rexroth was a total 45% off from the normal prices. Thanks to this huge discounting we can now afford to buy spare materials such as one more the stainless steel sulfinert treated tubing.

It feels so good that some real action are finally happening after spending 2395843710 hours just to look for these components. We can soon start with the building session (which is what we planned for a looooooooong time ago). It will be both filled with exciting and challenging moments since it will be our first time to apply our idea and knowledge into the reality. As you may already know, the majority of the team members already started returning to theirs hometown for the summer vacation, which means the rest will be formed as the building group (and I am one of them hehehehe). I really hope everything will go smoothly and as planned but as mostly people say “ We don’t grow when things are easy, we grow when we face challenges”. Therefor challenge accepted! \(^o^)/

• Author: Emily Chen
• Date: June 5, 2018

Swagelok, You Rock!

Hej people! I'd like you to meet Part No. SS-400-3 - Stainless Steel Swagelok Tube Fitting, Union Tee. It's one of the many components that are donated to us by Swagelok, one of our super duper amazing sponsors without which we wouldn't be able to build and launch our experiment.

One of the most exciting aspect of the REXUS/BEXUS programme is the opportunity to build partnerships with the private sector, notably with component manufacturers and suppliers. This is a fantastic glimpse on space industry collaborations between different contractors, all working together towards building a successful mission that meets all of the requirements. Companies that we've reached out to for sponsorship and support always get excited about our project and really go above and beyond to help us pull through by providing both their expertise and products. The folks over at Swagelok are providing tremendous support and genuily want us to be succeed. You guys, so many people are excited about our project, it's a great motivation to ensure a successful mission because we don't want to let our supporters down.

Swagelok designs, manufactures, and delivers an expanding range of fluid system products and solutions. They produce high quality stuff, their fittings and tubing interfaces will ensure that the air we sample reliably travels from our pump to our sampling bags for a successful end-to-end sampling flow!

Cheers to you, Swagelok, thank you for your support. We won't let you down!

• Author: Georges L. J. Labrèche
• Date: June 4, 2018

Summer Resolution

Hello again, good readers! Looks like the summer period is upon us! So many have said their warm goodbyes. But as has been discussed ever since Winter Break ended, this summer will be anything but a vacation from BEXUS. You can outrun it about as well as you can bury your own shadow beneath the sand on a sunny beach (trust me, my five-year-old self is still terrified by that to this day)!

So if you are wondering, yesterday was supposed to be when I next uploaded! But surprise, surprise - I forgot! I must have been really beat from moving to another place of residence in Kiruna just last Saturday! Well, there is no place for excuses in the hierarchy of success once one starts climbing it, so I will own up to this - by making two blog posts in one day! That’s right - you get to see twice the amount of writing content from me! But because this is me, don’t expect twice the quality to go with it. It’s 23:05 as I write this exact sentence, and I had a lot of stuff to do today. The sign says to have a good summer, but until I have repaid my cut corners for BEXUS, it’s just me having “a summer”. Oh, and I believe my history of studying the French language is goading me into suspecting that the French expression needs to be written in the imperative form to make sense. Funny enough, I was wrong - it’s actually “passe un bon ete,” with the accents missing from the e’s in “ete,” because the coding behind this blog accepts only directly English characters. It is about as international as Pernik, Bulgaria - a town like Kiruna, stemming from a mining business that has since caused a slow, ongoing collapse of its own (economically speaking).

Speaking of which, I miss Pernik, maybe just a bit. It is where I used to spend my summers when I was a kid. But the sunny mountains and forests of my country of origin are just that - my origin. BEXUS holds the contract for my future right now - so I’d best help out my team in securing a triumphant accomplishment, so we can conclude this program and apply for our theses. Maybe then I'll get to go somewhere a bit more summer-like than here.

• Author: Ivan Zankov
• Date: June 04, 2018

Final Exam Conquered

Long time no see, good readers! This is the second of my Double-Blog-Post-Featurette! So, with the introductory post out of the way, let me speak a bit more on what has happened. First the important BEXUS-related news - it seems, that my comrades that travelled over to the Netherlands succeeded in making one heck of a good presentation! More updates to hopefully come from that in more future blog posts. We’re on the right track now!

Now, if you saw my last post just a few minutes ago, you may know that it is now summer season, and everyone is gone. Like everyone (I wish this blog had italics). I only saw three Swedes, Guillermo (fellow BEXUS member from our predecessor IRIS), and Emily. At least, that meant one other member could still be here. See, last Friday, many of us walked into the school building with a horrible sense of trepidation as we prepared to slay the “final boss” of this year - the Space Communication Exam. It wasn’t the easiest course we had taken and to be honest, I am only marginally convinced I passed mine. But once the required questions were answered, a wave of euphoria inundated me, as well as apparently many others. We walked out feeling like champion warriors of a sort (or at least I might have for five seconds). But that’s just the thing - if you think video-game logic for a moment, what earthly purpose would you have sticking around in the boss’s lair after it’s been defeated? If it doesn’t self-destruct, you’re just kind of left there with only your own thoughts to contemplate what you have just done. The others are gone - they left and you still haven’t. Such is how I feel right now. I am still here and I don’t really know what to do for the short while longer that I am here before I depart for my summer holidays.

Needless to say, PM Natalie to the rescue! She is still here, and so is around half of our team! I must have assumed everyone left, but in fact, I just happened to be one of the very few who went to school today. There will be work in the coming days, and also good company with whom to share it! Maybe, lingering here a bit longer wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

• Author: Ivan Zankov
• Date: June 04, 2018

Enclyclopedia

Hello guys, it’s me again Hamad to entertain you today. So, your very own friend is chilling these days after getting free from the CDR presentation. I know what you are thinking that summer is here, and I deserve some holidays. We are on the same page I guarantee you guys.

While visiting ESTEC, two things I like most were the models of the ISS and the Columbus. If you don’t know about them then you guys need to google or start going to the library. But, I can tell you here for free; ISS stands for International space station and humans, in reality, live over there 24/7 all year around. How cool it is, Yes I know, and Columbus is the science laboratory from the European Space Agency at ISS. Believe me guys, it looks are awesome from the inside. I know you will not forget to thank me so our contact button is at the top right corner; I welcome you in advance.

Have a nice time! Goodbye, Allahafiz, Vi ses.

• Author: Hamad Siddiqi
• Date: June 1, 2018

Proud

Hai hai.. Ansyar is here!! Yesterday was a big day for us. We just finished the CDR and hopefully we will pass it as well. There is nothing more that I can say to express my feeling than PROUD. I'm so proud of the team, we worked hard, but also study hard. (Yeehaa). FYI, we have just finished our last exam today (wohooo).

On top of that, I am so grateful for the positive feedback that we got in CDR, especially for Software Team. The first feedback we had was "above expectations". Yes, the time that we spent coding and debugging was not wasted at all. From the start we already aimed to finish the software prototype before summer, so that the others can do testing (e.g. sampling testing) to their heart content. So what do we have so far? There are several crucial parts in this experiment, i.e. sampling and communicataion (to ground station).

First sampling, I remember I developed the algorithm for the first time, simple but not tested yet. However, because of the rapid changes and increasing demands, the algorithm had some flaws. Then, I gathered all demands from other teams, science requirements and electrical limitations, then, in 10 minutes, I developed a completely different algorithm. Finally last Saturday I and Gustav tested the OBC and GS communication link, and it works. After that established, we can test my 10 minutes algorithm, aaaannndddd..... It worked (again so proud). Eventhough there were 2 bugs, first one was a really stupid mistake by me (I misplaced 1 syntax in different functions). The software crashed after reaching that syntax. The next bug was also basic mistake. At that one place for no reason, I started counting arrays in C++ from 1 (It has to start from 0). After fixing the bugs, now we have a working prototype that can handle sampling and several important electrical limitations and don't forget, it can be commanded manually as well. Oh I forgot to mentioned, we succesfully created a simple simulation environment for the software. With this, we know how the software behave with "real" conditions.

In anyway, I learned a lot from this project and still hoping for more experience to come. See you on the next post. SOFTWARE ROCKS!!!

• Author: Muhammad Ansyar Rafi Putra
• Date: June 1, 2018

Punishment Post

Tjenixen, second post of the day. As I said in the last post. My sloppiness gave me the opportunity to write to you twice today! Personally, I don’t think it’s a punishment. Well, I’ve had worse punishments at least.

So, what could I possibly prattle on about in this post? Let’s talk Electronics! So, what’s new? Recently we have been working hard to get everything done for the CDR. Mostly locking down part’s and finishing up the PCB on my part. As we are reviewing all the parts for a last time, of course there are always going to be something that we will stumble upon that needs and extra work.

Luckily, we had the ask an expert session before the CDR presentation which gave us a lot of good input. Now we just need to put this input into work and finalize all the small details that are left until we can start ordering, testing and soldering inside the workshop all summer.

As a finisher of the second post of today I’d like to wish you all a good summer and I hope you will stay on top of our blog during the summer as well! Ha de gött!

• Author: Emil Nordqvist
• Date: June 1, 2018

It's done!

Hej gott folk! Today it all ends. Well... not all. But the last day of this semester has finally arrived! All exams have been written and campus Kiruna is mostly emptied of students!

As you might have noticed someone forgot to write a blogpost yesterday due to his or hers intense last-minute studying for today’s exam. This someone might have been me(Emil). And as you may know, forgetting to blog gives us the opportunity to write you guys an extra blogpost! HURAY!

Yesterday was the big go or no-go day for Tubular. The CDR presentation. I did not attend since I joined the team so recently and I must say, I'm jealous of everyone that went to the Netherlands to present. From what I understood over the high-tech communication channels we use (totally not strings and cans) the presentation went well and hopefully the answer for the Tubular team regarding when to start building is two weeks ago! Although we still await confirmation.

Now that the exams are done and the CDR is done we can finally enjoy the summer that all the recent blogposts have talked about. I'm sure I will enjoy at least looking out at the summer through the window of the workshop this summer. Until next time, ha de gött!

• Author: Emil Nordqvist
• Date: June 1, 2018

Commitment

Hej people!!!! The Tubular Team has landed in ESTEC today! We feel ready for tomorrows quest, excited to show our work to the panel!

The last two weeks have been a bit stressful, just a tiny little bit, having to take the exams before the rest if the class (thanks to our university to make it possible, they always commit to it giving all the facilities to their students! Tack så mycket!). So, two exams, a bunch of projects to submit and, of course the CDR presentation. Just a few adjustments during our flights to the main land and everything is set for tomorrow.

Summer has arrived, so after the CDR, university is over until September. Next time you hear from me I will be writing from my beloved Catalonia! Can't wait for that! I leave the Swedish summer to get a REAL summer, time to get some tan and enjoy the family and friends time! Some Bexus work as well making sure our building team staying in Kiruna have all they need to set the mechanical components and pneumatic system ready for the late July revision! Over now, may the force be with us tomorrow!

PS. I don't like to claim for luck, I believe it should only be asked for when life is in danger! Tomorrow is just a challenging step and we gotta give it all! Always commit to what you want!

• Author: Pau Molas Roca
• Date: May 30, 2018

Soldering for Space

Welcome to blog number three of today! This blog brought to you from the exotic location of Leiden, The Netherlands, where its been a balmy 31 degrees and the chances of being run over by a bike have never been higher.

I have come to ESTEC ahead of the rest of the team to take part in the BEXUS soldering course. This has been on for the past two days and we learnt about through hole, surface mounting and wire soldering as well as crimping and cable connections. We learnt not only how these should look but also how to make these flight ready, meaning if we wanted to we could send that solder to space and it would work.

With the two day course complete, I can begin to reflect on what I have learnt. The most important thing when soldering for space is not the actual soldering itself, but the cleaning. You have to clean everything before you start, everything before you solder, everything after you solder and then everything at the end. Small pieces of dirt or flux might not be huge problems down on the ground, but take them into the vacuum of space and suddenly sublimation comes in and ruins your day. I also now know that good alignment and bending can make or break your through hole solders and that surface mounting requires patience, a steady hand and approximately two atoms of solder.

Now all that is left to do is polish the CDR presentation, wait for the rest of the team to arrive from Kiruna and explore a little more of Leiden.

• Author: Natalie Lawton
• Date: May 29, 2018

Swedish summer

I will be talking about the Swedish summer and what to look forward to and what you readers might want to test celebrate (If you are not doing it already). Now that we are in Kiruna there is some errors in nature during summer. We have had our last night for a while so yeah sun at every moment during the day, who needs to sleep anyway. It makes it a lot easier to just forget how late it is and then to go sleep (more time to build BEXUS).

Then a guide for dressing accordingly to the Swedish summer. The definition of a perfect summer might be a lot of sun, 30 degrees in the shade and laying at the beach. A dream is good but the summer is more about a mindset here, above 10 degrees it is shorts weather if it gets to 20 in the sun it is a good day. Even if there is a lot of clouds you just look for a spot of blue sky focus on it imagining summer.

Now that you know how to dress I will go into the famous midsummer day that will come in about a month. It is the day when people gather celebrate the longest of days with lots of food, drinks and dance. The main part of it is the food. A traditionally lunch should be potatoes and herring, going with it there is the “nubbe”. When you want to drink your “nubbe” you have to sing a song and every family present should contribute with at least one song.

Then comes the dancing, it will be a circle dance around a maypole, singing songs dancing around. For those interested and want to practice some of the songs are. Karusellen, Morsgrisar är vi allihopa, Prästens lilla kråka, Sju vackra flickor i en ring, Raketen and a lot more. Now you know more about the Swedish summer, it’s traditions on how to celebrate.

• Author: Erik Fagerstrom
• Date: May 29, 2018

Going to CDR

Hello, Erik from Thermal is back with a special two part blogg! Because my memory is that of a goldfish sometime, very efficient but short. I will be giving you two blog post today to compensate for my blunder and forgetting it yesterday, disappointing you, our readers.

Now we are close to CDR (two days left woop woop) and we are going there confident to present and to astonish the panel. Our dear electrical team have gone ahead to scout out and start prepare and tomorrow (wednesday) the rest of us will join them. Then thursday we will give our presentation showing our hard work and how amazing TUBULAR will become when built.

Last friday we had a mock presentation where we invited students and teachers to come listen and give a lot of feedback so we can prepare and improve even more. The last days since then have been all about fixing, preparing and practice. Even if the school is soon over and summer will come it is to go all in for this CDR to ace it.

We have had our last meeting as a whole groupe as well before the summer because soon people will go away for summer and it is not until the Autumn that we all will be back again. The meeting ended with a new TUBULAR group photo with all the new members included. Time to sign off and go back to practice to get this CDR presentation done and the best it can be until next time!

• Author: Erik Fagerstrom
• Date: May 29, 2018

Bug hunting

TUB.. Kiruna do you copy?

Kiruna.. Yes TUB we copy you.

TUB.. It's beatiful, they.. they should have sent a poet.

I can hardly describe my feeling when we at TUBULAR software team managed to get the groundstation to display the simulated data from the Arduino. A huge milestone have been achieved. We spent a long time bug hunting the other day trying to find the bugs that stood in our way. We discovered that the way we displayed the red and green lights that indicated the status of the valves, pumps and heaters would take a couple of seconds to properly update. Meaning if we would have sampling rate higher than say 0.2Hz the groundstation would be busy updating the GUI while new data would come in before it was finished and interrupt occured. Luckly there where easier and faster ways of displaying the pictures.

• Author: Gustav Dyrssen
• Date: May 27, 2018

Gathering experience

It’s been already 12 days from the SEDv2.0 due and I’ve start to notice some side effects every time I look myself into the mirror. My friends say that I still have a ride, but I don’t know what to say. Indeed, I know; hello people, I am Jordi and I am 25 and BEXUS.

BEXUS as a measure of time? It is widely known that a human year is equivalent to seven dog years, so the question is, how many years are equivalent to one BEXUS project? It’s not stated anywhere. May I develop a Matlab scrip to calculate that?

Am I still in the age to have kids? Who knows? Can I retire without even finish my University studies? Ahhh such a dream would never occur, but anyway, that’s so confusing dude. To be honest, I was expecting that this programme would help you to grow, but I would never imagine in that way.

But hey! That’s not the point, if only that was true, would that mean we travelled in time? Am I older than my parents? Crazy, that trip should be announced in the manual! Whatever… looking at the bright side, at least I could avoid madness.

• Author: Jordi Coll Ortega
• Date: May 26, 2018

Science has your back..

Tjena kexen! How are you? I am Kiki and i am good! Summer is here, the grass is green again and the sun is shinning! Do you need more reasons to be happy? But oh wait! There is something or to be more precise someone, that disturbs my peace..

Can you make a guess? I'll give you a clue. It's the other science team member! And you know why? Because she gets to write her blog before me and so, she always keeps you updated about our team's work, and I have nothing to say!

Well well, I'll give you a general team update. Today we are having our mock presentation before the CDR. In 15 minutes! I am not presenting, but we all going to be there, support and give our feedback to the ones who presenting so they can nail their presentation next week :) After that, we are having a team meeting, probably the last one with everyone in one place before summer, to plan how we will proceed the next days.

I have to leave you now (don't cry). Wish us luck! See you soon xxx

• Author: Kyriaki Blazaki
• Date: May 25, 2018

Concerns

Hi! Today is Nuria writing the blogpost. As you may know, team TUBULAR has been doing some testing and that has brought up new problems or concerns.

A good example for this is when we first tested filling a bag with the pump at low pressure. We first emptied the bag manually and thought it was empty, it looked empty. Then we put it in the vacuum chamber and started decreasing the pressure to simulate the conditions at 24 km of altitude. It turned out that, apparently, some air was still left inside the bag and as the pressure was decreasing we could see the air expanding. The pump had not been turned on yet.

Then we visited FMI and saw that very little amount of air left in between valves could affect the results. Comparing the test configuration to our experiment configuration, we observed that we have longer tubes and therefore more air inside. This configuration created two big concerns. The first one was that the air left inside would mix with the sampled air and modify the concentrations. However, talking with the experts at FMI we understood that this effect can be compensated as far as we know how much air was there.

The second concern was if the amount of air inside the tubes would be large enough to fill up the bag and prevent the sampling. Everyone started freaking out with the idea that if this was true we would have to change our design being CDR very close… Science started calculating the numbers for the worst-case scenario which is tubes of 60 cm and best-case scenario, tubes of 25 cm, and then compared it with the air that would be remaining in the AirCore if we reached 26 km and… WE ARE SAFE! The results show that if we vacuum the air inside the tubes, we will have less air remaining in the bags than in the AirCore!

• Author: Núria Agües Paszkowsky
• Date: May 24, 2018

Almost there

Whatsssss up TUBULAR readers, and yes your mech girl Emily is back again! As you maybe already know, the team is already preparing for the CDR presentation. At the same time the unwelcomed exams are also getting closer. Bleeeeeh, but luckily we have some good news to cheer up us a bit. Many of you maybe already know, I have been in crazy contact with a lot of vendors such as Parker, Bosch Rexroth and Swagelok for the past few weeks. I kind of become the sponsor hunter in this team and the good news this week is... *drums* Swagelok are very interested for a sponsorship with TUBULAR team. Since most of the mechanical components in our experiment are based on theirs products, this will be a tremendous support! This is not officially decided but I still want to thank Swagelok for giving us this opportunity.

Anyway, I feel the assignments and exams are hunting me right now and therefor I need to leave you guys with such a short blogpost. But I can promise, next time it will be longer and hopefully I will be able to share more good news! For now, take care and see you soon!

• Author: Emily Chen
• Date: May 23, 2018

Passing the Baton

Hej people! Project Manager Georges here with his last post as a Project Manager! That's right, now that the Critical Design has been submitted it is time for more capable leadership to take this baby into the next level and actually build it. Plus, I suspect the team is getting a bit weary of me assigning them tasks like hot potatoes fresh out of the oven. Change is good! Who is the new PM, you ask? Drumroll... Natalie Lawton!

This leadership change has been planned for quite some time actually. More precisely, since I found out that I wasn't going to be able to be physically present at our Space Campus home base in Kiruna during the very exciting Experiment Building and Testing phase of the project. I leave at the end of this month and won't be back to Space Campus until early October, just a few weeks prior our launch window. There are several ways I can still contribute remotely, notably with documentation, outreach, assisting our new fearless leader, and hopefully I can team up with Ansyar and Gustav with software development efforts.

In my opinion, the best Project Managers are the ones who continuously aim to make themselves redundant. I definitely got a lot of help from Natalie in this aspect where she's basically been acting as a Deputy Project Manager for quite some time now and has taken many initiatives towards ensuring that our output is at a high standard that we can all be proud of. Because of this, the transition is happening quite smoothly and I'm sure the team will do a fantastic job supporting her leadership. Go Natalie! Go Team!

Peace out.

• Author: Georges L. J. Labrèche
• Date: May 22, 2018

Designer’s Dejection

Hello again, good readers! SED 2.0 is in and we don’t ever have to worry about it again! Well, at least not that exact number indicative of our progress (measured on a scale from 0.0 to 5.0 and hopefully ending there). The delusion was good for the 30 seconds it took me to come up with that statement anyway… So, with the 40-MB-and-then-some-PDF having been sent in, now it is up to those of us not preparing for the CDR presentation to help those that are! In my case, I will probably soon have to help the other half of Team Thermal organize his speech points and maybe give him some neatly written cue cards!

But this post is going to be a break from the thermodynamics references and deity-awful puns bound to come with them. This is not an entry from this guy writing as a thermal engineer. This is a transcribed log from the guy who originally worked on the TUBULAR logo you now see whenever you visit us. You see, if this post’s preview and main images strike you readers with any sense of familiarity, it might be because they depict my final draft of the product - how it was originally supposed to appear. Now, I did just use the words “original(ly)” and “final” in the same sentence, having them regard the same subject. This is where my contribution ended, and the successful elements from this were taken and accompanied by a few new decorations - that would become the molecules and stars that replace the mountains and clouds that can be seen in the background and periphery! This was TUBULAR’s final decision. The credit to the newer elements goes to a helpful friend of the soon-to-be new project manager of our group. It’s fair game whether the integration of the two ideas to form our final logo was also his doing, or the doing of the future manager herself! I don’t remember.

I do remember now, that I had some regrets about submitting my design the way I did. I should have taken the hint at the time that the 80’s feel was meant to be a very loose guideline for the art style - and not the very core foundation of image’s appearance. The fluorescence of the outlines and the metallic luster of the letters just took this in the wrong direction, and I see why the true final change was made. What saddens me though is knowing how far this design was changed once outside of my grasp - and that now it too, no longer represents us entirely. At least one of the gases we originally intended to sample will no longer be being featured in our experiment, making some of the molecules included in the insignia redundant. If we had seen this coming sooner, I could have at least pressed the rest of TUBULAR at the time to remove them and expand the letters to the size seen in my original version. Maybe then, we’d be on the right track for good. And maybe then, people wouldn’t dwell so much on what the heck those letters are supposed to spell either.

Either way, I have, and continue to respect our final outcome. It was after all, a group decision that needed to be made on what the logo would be (at the time), and I too thought I may have neglected a bit of the air and space elements that would define our mission. Going with the final version we use today is certainly something we all appreciated back then and still should today - in good times and bad.

• Author: Ivan Zankov
• Date: May 21, 2018

Free post

Hello people! It’s Sunday here and I will talk some of my random thoughts today.

If you are following us recently then you would definitely know that we are done with the submission of our SED. Now, the team is looking forward to flying to Noordwijk to defend the proposed design and to get approval by the panel to start building the experiment. I am sure that we will pass the CDR in the second attempt if not in the first presentation. After submitting the SED report, the team is much relaxed and enjoying get together with BBQ, dancing, and partying.

The time is passing quite fast so wish us good luck that we complete all the stages on time and give you guys good news of our successful flight in October. This is it from my side today. Ha det bra! Vi Ses! Allahafiz!

• Author: Hamad Siddiqi
• Date: May 20, 2018

Simulation

Haloha... It's me again, Ansyar, one of the creators of Tubular's soul. Why soul? Because the electronics box is called The Brain. Then, the software becomes the soul of The Brain.

As part of developing the soul, the software team is trying to create the flight environtment of Bexus or in general people call it simulation. The simulation feature is supposed to feed the software all environment variables, such as presssure, temperature, airflow, and humidity. Using this, the "bad" behaviour, i.e. bug, errors, of the software could be catched early. Then, we can feel more confident of the software.

So, the idea is the variables will be feed from the SD card. The card will contain several files that creates the simulation environment. For example, the pressure data is in the pressSim.txt file, which also contain the timeline of the feed. Say that the simulation will run for 1 hour, the feeding schedule could be set based on the user preference. It could be with interval of 20 minutes, or more.

Hopefully, we, software team, can establish this simulation ASAP, so we can test the software based on "real" data environment. See you guys next time. Cheerss~~

• Author: Muhammad Ansyar Rafi Putra
• Date: May 19, 2018

PCB in Development

Hi everyone, the new kid Electric Emil here. Joining a BEXUS project proved more challenging than what I thought. Although, this might be due to that the SED 2.0 was due five days from when I joined.

I really got thrown in during, wat seems to me like, the most hectic time possible. This forced me to get engaged quickly and start digging which was really helpful since it forced me to learn. As soon as I had a small understanding of what the project was I mediately started on the fun part (designing an electrical control system), together with the rest of the electrical team members. Believe it or not, the most challenging part was figuring out how diodes work at 1AM on a Saturday.

After the SED, the task of designing the PCB landed on my shoulders. I’m really excited about this since I never done this before and I wanted to learn about this. For now, the schematics should be redesigned a bit to only contain the components that should be placed on the PCB. We are using Autodesk’s Eagle software to make this process as simple as possible. Once the rearrangements are done designing the PCB SHOULD be easy... Should...

To finish my first blogpost, I just want to thank every in the TUBULAR for welcoming me with open arms into this project. I’m looking forward to getting to know you better and to work with you for the coming months. And that’s it for this blog post, as we say in Gothenburg, Ha de gött.

• Author: Emil Nordqvist
• Date: May 18, 2018

Decisions

Hej everyone! Well, as you see in the picture the Write-a-thon had some consequences. Not mcuh sleep during 5 days. An average of 4 hours selpt per day, 88 hours (that time when you forget to go to the toilet for 15 hours, PB don't tell my mum) of 3D design, interfaces everywhere and a loooot of writting and reviewing. I guess the non existing night in Kiruna made it sort of a unique experience. To be working at 3am it is easier when you have sunlight.

Our working days where long, really loooooong. I never work with music but man, this time was necessary. I love politics, mostly catalan politics, but I had never though that a political debate would help to concentrate that much. Oh but the way, Catalonia has a president now (FINALLY), as Tubular we are getting closer and closer to the Critical point of no return... if the pnel allows it (and by panel I mean supreme court, I hope I do not get imprisoned...).

I define myself as a perfecionist, so even after having submitted SED 2.0, I wanted to make sure everything was right. Therefore, I did a double-check. DAMN it! I discovered I have to change the lovely interfaces of the pneumatic system.. AGAIN. The latter implies some 3D changes as well, not to talk budgetwise... Over now, I leave you with Kiki for the last words, she has to say someting about between my rebel to young kid change.

Catalans! (rolling my eyes as i write).. Or it's just him? Anyway, i just made a comment that i prefer him as his rebel self with a beard and here i am now, taking over his blogpost and have nothing more to say! But since i am 100% sure that you are as much curious as i am about these 3D interfaces that have caused soo many problems and arguments, before even anyone gets to touch them, I'll tell you what. Almost midnight and you get to vote. Which Pau do you prefer? Before or After? One lucky winner will come to TUBULAR headquarters in Kiruna to meet Pau in person and his lovely interfaces of the pneumatic system. Of course the trip is on Pau ;)

• Author: Pau Molas Roca
• Date: May 17, 2018

The Sensible Box and the Witch

After completing the craziest week of BEXUS so far where the team somehow pulled over 800 hours between everyone, that's 114 team hours a day or on average a 60+ hour work week for everyone, we finally had our SED v2.0 finished and ready to send. Or so we thought...

There's nothing quite like the realisation that you really should read through the whole SED and that you probably shouldn't skip out the appendices. Followed by the secondary realisation that you probably shouldn't have looked at the total page number and living a life in ignorance is indeed bliss. 293 pages and nearly an hour later I had finally finished traversing the highs and lows of the SED. I leave my review below.

From the beautiful scenes set in chapter 1 the introductions of all the major characters was sublime. The exposition and build up in chapter 4, where our sensible box began its journey, was nothing short of literary genius and the magnificent twists that occured in chapter 5 truly had me on the edge of my seat. The way the authors gave the resolution in chapter 7 brought a small tear to my eye, it was truly wonderful to see the sensible box overcome all the trials and tribulations set out before it. Though the shocking introduction of the witch in Appendix I leaves me impatient to read the sequel.

Overall I would rate this SED a perfect 5/7. With a solid story and well fleshed out characters this piece is surely destined to become a staple in literature. I would recommend it to all as a perfect piece for some bed time reading.

• Author: Natalie Lawton
• Date: May 16, 2018

Once more the sun sets

Once more the sun sets and we are one more day closer until we shall fly. Even if a day in the span of months is nothing, today have brought us a lot closer. Finally the SED v2.0 have been sent in. The last week have been rough and a lot of late evenings have been spent working hard and at the same time bonding as a team.

The dream of flight we share to go beyond the clouds where everything is possible. We in TUBULAR come from different places in the world but here we are working together, for me I could not have believed to be doing something like this before I started studying at the university.

Now we shall only fix the last small things and go present for CDR our next goal. Then comes the summer soon (already here thinks the crazy Swedish person) and the most fun part of building.

Time to sign out and we in thermal say enjoy the summer that now is here and seeya until next time.

• Author: Erik Fagerstrom
• Date: May, 15 2018

SED 2 home stretch

Day 3, rations are running low, and with it group morale. It all started when that dammed mist rolled in over town. The church thats just some one hundred meters away are obscured from view due to the fog. Outside there are persons..no that the wrong word, they might have a human silhouette but they are most assuredly not human. But they stayed where outside, the worst of it was inside woth us, The SED 2.0 writing. The looming deadline hanged above us. I think all of this just broke Kicki, she just suddenly stood up and went outside and never comeback. I sure can't blame her, I myself have also contemplated just to leave and seek my fate in the mist. Whatever fate befalled her out there, I... I hope she traverssed the mist safetly and are better place. However I should know better after looking outside. Hopefully we can finish this SED without any further losses.

Day 5, We're all alive and no one went missing in the mist. After working on the SED for what feels like an eternity we're nearing completion. Only a few screws left to turn and we will have completed SED 2.0 and we can relax by studying for the exams.

• Author: Gustav Dyrssen
• Date: May 14, 2018

Lord of the bags

TubularMember1 - I can't do this, TubularMember2.

TubularMember2 - I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories TubularMember1. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines, it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, TubularMember1, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. Because they were holding on to something.

TubularMember1 - What are we holding on to, TubularMember2?

TubularMember2 - That there’s some good in this experiment, TubularMember1. And it’s worth fighting for.

• Author: Jordi Coll Ortega feat. Samwise Gamgee
• Date: May 13, 2018

SED writing,

Tjena kexen! (should i ask a sponsorship from m&ms?!) Hope this post finds you well! I am Kiki and I’ll give you a brief updated of what TUBULAR people are up to! Actually, I can say it all in one word, SED.

Does this ring you a bell? I thought so! So, the deadline is in two days. This means that there are no distinctions between the departments. We all work together as one, on this loooong document, making sure that everything about the experiment is crystal clear. Nothing more than work work work work work. Boring?

The weather on the other hand, is not boring. For you who may not know, in Kiruna you can experience ALL four seasons in ONE day. Sunny and slightly windy spring day in the morning, progressing to warm summer in midday, to autumn rain in the afternoon, concluding into cold rainy winter in the evening! IN 24 HOURS. !@#$%^&

I will close this post with a Rocky Balboa quote. “Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!” Cheesy but true! xxx

• Author: Kyriaki Blazaki
• Date: May 12, 2018

Finish Metereological Institute Visit

Hi! Today is Nuria writing the blogpost. This week is being our busiest week since we are submitting the SED 2.0 on Monday 14th. Furthermore, Natalie and I travelled for two days to the Finish Meteorological Institute. During our stay there, we got to meet Rigel Kivi and Pauli Heikkinen, two scientists that work at the FMI and are collaborating on our project.

The plan was to test 8 bags to see if they hold the concentration of gases for more than 48h and also check if condensation occurs. We spent half a day doing the preparations for the tests and flushing the sampling bags with nitrogen. Then we made the analysis plan and the first two bags had to be analysed after 6h of being filled, which was 12.30 AM!

It was a tough day and it turned out that we didn't get the expected results. We used 1L bags instead of 3L which are the ones used in our experiment. After analysing four of the eight bags, we saw that the concentration had changed in almost all of them. Our supposition is that there was some nitrogen left inside the plastic valve of the bag. Due to the smaller size of the bag (1L instead of 3L), that nitrogen diluted in the sample and altered the concentration.

But the news is not all bad, we keep positive! We have learned the importance of vacuuming and flushing the bags properly and that the handling of the samples is very delicate and easily alterable. Further tests have been planned after this visit in order to know how our experiment will work and how the configuration will affect the sampling.

• Author: Núria Agües Paszkowsky
• Date: May 11, 2018

D-4

Your girl Emily is back here again with another post. As the SED deadline catching up us, we all in TUBULAR are working harder and harder. Today we had our first SED marathon which means the whole team is gathered and writing the documentation, at the same time sorting out all the smallest details that needs to be crystal clear in the SED. Every team member’s focus was on top level and this kind of energy makes the hardest problem to look easy because we all are solving and challenging it as a team.

Don’t know if you guys have catch the gossips yet but the beginning of this week, Natalie and Nuria went to FMI and came back with both good and bad news. The good new is we don’t need to use any manual valves any longer to seal the outlet and inlet of the coiled tube. This will be done by quick connectors, which save us a lot in weight and cost. On the other hand, the bad news is, the schematic of the CAC needs to changed and some interfaces need to researched. But I can deal with that, since the advantages are more valuable.

Anyway it’s time for recharging of energy for another SED marathon day.

P.S. Thanks for the good work today, team! Let’s keep up with it!

• Author: Emily Chen
• Date: May 10, 2018

All Dem Management Tools

People, it's my second post of the day. In my post from a few hours ago I explained how I forgot to post yesterday and the price to pay is double posting. I hereby officiate this new rule with this post! Certainly, it will discourage others from following my poor example.

This time around I'm going to talk to you about some of the management tools we use to keep things relatively smooth and on track with deliverables. Managing a project can be very exciting but talking about it is complete snoreville so I'll be brief and cut to the chase. Ready? Here we go!

We use Asana's Kanban board to manage and assign tasks and we loosely base our approach to planning with something called th Agile Methodology, do look it up! When someone's task doesn't pass Review, it goes to Not Accepted and the person who was assigned the task in question usual whines about it but in the end it's extra motivation for him or her to get the job done thoroughly because nobody like to see their task marked as Not Accepted, not even yours truly. Yuck! For documentation we use ShareLaTeX, it's awesome for collaborative work and I personally get quite into the Zen zone when formatting formulas in it. Everytime we deliver a new version of our Student Experiment Documentation (SED), we synchronize the LaTeX code with our project source code repository in GitHub so that we preserve a snapshot of that specific version of the document for posterity to enjoy, kinda like a time capsule.

To track my time I use a nifty little Android app called Timesheet. Along with your time, you can log the mood you were in while you worked on your task and then come up with a nice little report about your mood swings throughout the project. Maybe I should include that report in SED v2.0 that's due this coming Monday!

• Author: Georges L. J. Labrèche
• Date: May 10, 2018

Electric Emil

Hej people! Project Manager Georges here announcing the addition of a new team member to the electrical division. Say hello to Emil! Yesterday I overheard him say the word "MOSFET" so I believe he is competent and we all look very forward to the much needed help, particularly over the summer during the building phase.

In other news, after making sure to remind everyone about posting their blogpost on time I have shamefully posted this one a day late. What! The penalty for this offense will be double posting from yours truly. That should discourage others from following my poor example. So, later today you'll get another blogpost from me and still one from Emily. That's 3 in one day, times are a crazy.

Conclusion... a big welcome to Emil!

• Author: Georges L. J. Labrèche
• Date: May 10, 2018

Canned Heat

Hello again, good readers! The week of SED 2.0 finalization is upon us! This means plenty of work for each one of us! And not just in our division either – but our respective sections in the SED itself – it’s double the trouble! Maybe the rubble too, if we start collapsing under the pressure. With all this work needing to get done, my very dreams will probably be filled with equations, balloons, and snow (because apparently you not safe from snow even in May if you live in Kiruna)! The flames burn within me from this pressure – but I channel them into productivity I never knew I had!

So once again, much has happened since the last time you delightful readers might have seen my name in the author’s ID slot! Both Erik and I have updated our respective chunks of the Matlab code, so now the output data is not only more accurate (on my part), but also more comprehensive (Erik’s part)! The main Matlab file can now display various temperatures both with and without direct radiation from the sun. Other than that, he continues with Ansys simulations and I continue with my tables of thermal properties for air... These tables give the convection values for my script, which leads into his main script, and those results are what go into the 3D simulations of thermal flux.

The workload may make my composure crack every so often – characterized by my proclivity for shouting profanity. But I find a good way to relax in times like these to be to listen to music that could describe the situation concisely. I felt the custom visualization playing with this song also deserved to be shared.

• Author: Ivan Zankov
• Date: May 08, 2018

Last Week

Hi everyone! Another day, another blog from your very own, most favorite, Electrical team.

We are now into the last week before the submission of our Critical Design Review (CDR) which is due on Monday next week (14.05.18). So, we kicked off our first day of this last week with one big meeting to get everyone on board about the overall design structure and all the interfaces required between different experiment boxes.

From today’s discussion, I believe that electrical team does not require to change any of its design elements. But, the dimensions of the PCB boards need to take into consideration to check if everything could be placed well within the limits of the main electronics box provided by the mechanical team. And, I am sure within this weak we will figure out the answer to this question. This is not the only task, there are a lot of things needed to be done for this week. So, wish us good luck and thank you for reading my blog today.

• Author: Hamad Siddiqi
• Date: May 7, 2018

Sponsors

Hej everyone! Shit happens, just for you to know. What then? Just stand up and make a step froward. The SED 2.0 due date is getting closer and closer. In my previous blog posts I told you about the pneumatics system design. It was all set, even SMC vendor agreed to sponsor us with their amazing and adaptable components (valves, interfaces and tubing). At the same time we hear back from RESTEK who decided to sponsor us as well! WE ARE THE TREND!!! So if you are a multimillionaire and are reading this post, just call me and I give you my bank account! Of course it will be for the team… ;)

The new RESTEK sponsorship added to some contamination issues with the tube material, made us change our mind and introduce stainless steel tubing. Luckily, SMC has everything we need in terms of interfaces availability to still be able to keep the same design with minor changes. The latter doesn’t mean that some research had to be done before finding the solution. Both design possibilities are still on and on hold for both sponsors to reply to our latest emails. It comes to my mind a catalan expression; “No diguis blat fins que no el tinguis al sac i ben lligat”, which in english stands for; “Do not say corn until you have it inside the bag and properly closed”. The weekend has had some CAD modeling as well; Electronic Box, shielding walls, and some documentation writing.

As you have seen the weekend has been a bit busy (luckily it has been bad weather). Since I already expected it, I charged batteries on Friday evening doing a sunset ski tour in Narvik fiord summiting the always impressive Rombakstøtta. We got to have some crazy late lights as you can see in the picture!

I will get back to you after we the submission of the SED 2.0 and on our way to prepare the challenging Critical Design Review! Let’s go team!

• Author: Pau Molas Roca
• Date: May 06, 2018

Unit Testing

Hello everyone! Ansyar is here~. From the last post, I promise to share my unit testing experience. The first time i heard about unit test was 3 weeks ago. Our PM told us, software team, to use unit test to catch any logic mistake early. Then, I began studying unit test. It took a couple of days to understand the basic. After that, i learned that it's not possible to apply unit test by using Arduino official IDE, this is the reason why we are using PlatformIO now.

Important thing before unit test, your code has to be unit test-able. That means the code cannot have only one main function, instead split it into several test-able functions. After splitting the functions, i tried to build the test cases, then i realized another obstacle. In PlatformIO, there are two types of unit tests, first one is unit test for the whole code (note that any arduino code is hardware dependent), second one is non-hardaware dependent unit test for C/C++ using unity library. The hardware dependent function has to be uploaded to the board before testing it, but the normal one doesn't.

For now, we have two unit tests for non-hardware dependent functions. In my opinion, unit test is an awesome tool. I used it to test the command reception function, testing if the software can receive the telecommand properly. Then, I found that my function had one logic mistake that cause the whole code to crumble and the code was compile-errors free. Then I realized, no compile errors doesn't mean your code is working. Yes, that's it for today. Have a nice weekend peeps!!

• Author: Muhammad Ansyar Rafi Putra
• Date: Mei 5, 2018

Starting to Get Pumped

Hej hej. I hope you remember a few weeks ago I introduced you to one of our most critical components, the pump. Well since then not only has the pump arrived but we've also managed to complete two tests! This was super important for us as to pass the next review we had to prove that our pump would work with the low pressure found at high altitudes.

Luckily for us our careful research paid off and the pump had no problems turning on at 30hPa, which is equivilant to being at 24km altitude ^0^

Though this only marks the start of our testing with some future gems to look forward to including abusing our components by freezing them, shaking them violently and rounding off with a couple of 10 hour long tests that will be a fun bonding experience for the whole team to enjoy.

Here's hoping that the rest of our tests go as well as our first ^-^

• Author: Natalie Lawton
• Date: May 4, 2018

Hot N Cold

Now when the SED deadline is getting closer and everything is coming on place we in thermal are simulating the temperature of TUBULAR to see if it will be problems. It comes with problems doing simulations cause it’s hot then it’s cold, I say yes it’s working, then ansys says no, it will fly up and then fall down. The hardest is that it need to take into account and simulate all different critical stages.

One of the most interesting things with simulating is that you will see the experiment on a whole different way then everyone else. Seeing how the temperature will increase and decrease with how the sun is hitting the sides. Can be up to 70 degrees difference on the aluminium shell on the opposite sides of the experiment.

So now it will be analyse the results to see if more insulation needs to be added, does some need to be reduced. A lot of critical decision have to be taken and in a short time 9 days left until the design shall be done. All of us in TUBULAR shall be working super hard to make it the best and we in thermal will keep going hot by grinding our gear thinking hard.

Keep it “lagom” like we say in Sweden, both Hot N Cold!

• Author: Erik Fagerstrom
• Date: May 3, 2018

Flying home and a movie

Hello, fans of Tubular or should say hi to Georges and the few others who are reading this blog. Today I will be flying home to Scania to meet my family. Hopefully it will be sunshine, warmth and the brisk smell of spring in the air that his absent from the north.

But I digress, you come here to read about our progress in the project and not about the weather. Luckily software is one of the things one can work on anywhere, as long as there is coffee and the abilty to google stack Overflow.

But first I must talk about a recent activites we have done. After two team building activities in such short period the groups morale is on top. One of the activities was watching a period peace set in the contemporary era. I saw myself reflected in the movie's protagonist, a tragic man who lost his planet but still carried on, determined to stop similar atrocites happening on other worlds. Despite what socity thought about his plans he stuck to his guns and didn't let anyone stand in the way of his dreams. I myself can only hope to have that kind of commitment that displayed.

It also followed the tribulations of a group of friends determined to protect their home from invaders. While not as intacing as the main plot it still managed to explore some deep themes about group dynamics when that group is faced with titanic problems. I could really se our group reflected onto that screen, a truly mesmerizing experience. I hope my fellow Tubulars will also be inspired the same way I was by this masterpice, our Citizen Kane of our generation.

• Author: Gustav Dyrssen
• Date: May 02, 2018

The engineer superpower

This has been a really exasperating week. Big input, small output. Many tentatives, only one “final” solution. As every trouble in this world, it begins with questions, QUESTIONS EVERYWHERE! How to attach the experiment to the gondola? How to attach both boxes each other? How easily access the interior of the gondola without unscrewing the whole Eiffel tower? Where allocate the electronic box? How to fix the bags inside the structure? How can we connect the AirCore valve with the electronic box if they are allocated in two different enclosures that will be separated after (and before) the flight? … (endless list to infinity and beyond). And after all, I’m sure you will ask another one, were not all these questions already answered? Yes! You are right, in theory. But here is where the struggle comes to knock on your door. Are all those solutions compatible with the vendors products? Kill me.

Trying to turn all the ideal designs into something that we can really touch. This (for people without any experience in manufacturing) requires that kind of anticipation that allows you to realize that those apparently amazing connectors you had found in the endless catalogue of a supplier doesn’t work on your structure because, after building everything mentally, you figure out that the last wall can’t be pinned because you should screw it from the inside of the box. Then, that precise moment when your mind has gone because it’s tired of being tortured, is when you start trying to put someone of the team inside the experiment. And then is also when you realize that you are not working anymore.

I’m feeling like Dr Strange anticipating possible futures to figure out in which one the experiment is properly build and operative. I wish I could have the time stone too but, come on, then that would be a piece of cake.

Once I read that a question has not been answered until two more questions have took its place, which I can tell you now how damn right it is. The only thing I want is to see what I don’t have in front of me. And that’s all about, the engineer superpower, to read things that are not yet on the page.

• Author: Jordi Coll Ortega
• Date: May 1, 2018

Checklists

Hej people! It’s Kiki from science team. Monday again today, and after a nice weekend of fun with the rest team members, it is time to go back to work!

As the Critical Design Review is around the corner, the members of the other divisions are on fire, trying to figure out all the different components we need, what is the best material to use, drawing schematics and making sure they don’t miss anything!

And if you think that this period is the most relaxed for the science team, you are mistaken! We may not be under the same pressure as the other team members, trying to figure out how to build the experiment, but we have to study a lot, to be able to answer all their questions! How many sensors do you need? Where do you want them? What do you want to measure?

Currently, we are trying to make a checklist with all the things that need to be tested and done before launch in order to make sure that we won’t miss anything important that will prove fatal for our experiment. Imagine forgetting a valve open! Oops.. What is more, we are trying to understand and put in order all the steps required for the bag’s tests and how we will analyze the data, by studying past research papers. Phew! That’s all for now! See you soon xxx

• Author: Kyriaki Blazaki
• Date: April 30, 2018

Team-building session

Hej hej! Today it's me, Nuria, posting again. I know in my last post I promised to tell you about the second test related to the bags but instead I want to talk about team bonding.

Yesterday team TUBULAR had a team building session, we had an improvised BBQ at Hagelstigen (student apartments in Kiruna). It was a sunny day up in the north, and team TUBULAR, mostly formed by non-Swedish students, started feeling like swedes, so we decided to go out and enjoy the nice POSITIVE 2 degrees and the extra sunlight hours (the sun sets after 10pm), the perfect weather combination for a barbeque!

Working in a team is not always a bed of roses, people have different opinions, different ways of working or organizing themselves. Your work does not only depend on you, sometimes you need to wait for others to finish their task so that you can finish yours, or sometimes a decision that another member of the team makes, affects your own work, giving you much more work to do.

All those situations can create internal conflicts and it could be that some people held a grudge against someone else. This is the reason why a team building session is so important so that we can bond with each other and smooth things over. After all, we are not only a team, we are a family and we should all be able to separate work and friendship! All the problems should not be taken personally, it is always much more pleasant to work with happy people!

• Author: Núria Agües Paszkowsky
• Date: April 29, 2018

Let’s be specialist

Hello everyone! It’s Emily from the mechanical team again! Last post, I gave you guys a brief description on the CAC set up and today I will try to explain it in details so we all can be CAC specialists after this post!

As we already known the CAC is a combination of a 200 m of 3.175 mm and 100 m of 6.35 mm stainless steel tubes. At each free end it is connected to a manual valve. The valve which is connected to the 100m tube, will also be linked to a magnesium dryer tube. It contains magnesium perchlorate and its function is to ensure that no moisture enters the tubes during sampling. A solenoid valve will be inserted between the dryer tube and a 50 cm tube that will reach outside of the box. Between all these connections, there will be interfaces linking together different types of the tube ends such as female respective male ends.

When everything is set, the next step is to fill CAC with a nitrogen gas, by letting the free end of 50 cm tube be attached to a nitrogen gas tank. When the filling process is done, the manual valve (attached to the 200m tube) and the solenoid valve will be closed. The CAC will then almost be ready to go up in the sky. With almost I mean of course a lot of tests and verifying needs to be done before the real deal, but that will be another story.

This was all from me today, see you guys next time and until then please stay healthy!

• Author: Emily Chen
• Date: April 28, 2018

Component Research

Hej hej People! it's me, Georges, your favourite PM. In this blogpost I want to talk about the importance of being skpetic. Over here at TUBULAR HQ, the entire team is always excited about the idea of building the experiment that we tend to brush off the finer nitty gritty details as just a matter of connecting part X with part Y and voila it's that simple so what could possibly go wrong?

You see the picture above? The struggle is real. That's our very own Emily Chen after being asked to figure out the exact component needed to connect part X with part Y. Oh and turns out that researching this has revealed that we also have to seal part Z as well. You see the point I'm trying to make? Turns out it's not as magic as it sounds and there's a lot of things to consider such as material, orifice diameters, temperature ranges, and the list goes on and on.

What helps is drawing diagrams and schematics for absolutely everything. Even if it's just a shameful early draft with stick figures. It really helps to start revealing the missing details that all of us have been guilty of not considering. The blog picture is of Emily, but rest assured that we've all gone through this. So people, be skeptic about things just working out like Legos until you've sketched it all out!

PM Georges, over and out.

• Author: Georges L. J. Labrèche
• Date: April 27, 2018

The Second Law of Thermodynamics

Welcome back, good readers! You know how the Second Law of Thermodynamics works? Well, the title is enough of an intro for anyone unfamiliar. We here at Team Thermal aspire to keep things simple. We’ll have to, for as long as we can anyway. As I find myself behind others every so often in this grand BEXUS endeavor, I find it helps to be near the others when the going gets tough. This way, one can get brought up to speed pretty quickly (it helps that you’ll have an easier time copying information from peers and siphoning from their motivation as is needed). Hey, it’s a dog eat dog world, and the laws of thermodynamics prove this to be no exception. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were at the center of it all for social behaviors!

But I digress. Remember that ambiguity I talked about last time I wrote here? Well, a lot of that went away with the snow, just as it should! Thanks to the efforts of comrade Erik, the coding has been set up, and it now works beautifully. It will take a bit more tweaking to get the exact right numbers, but this is now less than a day’s work! After that, there won’t be much left in the way for theoretical predictions (I suppose they can’t be called hand calculations anymore...).

Things will get even more heated within the next couple of weeks as we prepare for the SED 2.0 submission! I for one, however, think that things will go more smoothly than they did in our first official submission. Remember, I also did say the future bids a warm welcome...

• Author: Ivan Zankov
• Date: April 26, 2018

Busy times

Hello to the wonderful people of the Earth! Today is the day you will know how the electrical work is coming along. The Critical Design Review (CDR) is fast approaching and the finalized version of the electrical system is due before May 14, 2018, therefore since the past few weeks, the team has its foot on the accelerator and working hard to complete its tasks on time.

So, we are busy in finishing the schematics, ordering the sensors, but most importantly some of the critical components have started to arrive which require extensive testing to validate our experimental design setup.

I would like to discuss more the schematics because I am working on it for some weeks now. According to my experience up till this time, I should tell you some points that everything seems very simple and easy at the beginning of the design but later when you go deeper and start to work on the details then you realize that the things are not as easy as you think. Also, other teams such as science, mechanical or thermal put their influence on your design and many times you need to cope with their demands. Anyhow, the key is to keep up your morale and be positive all the time.

Thank you for reading my blog and visiting us today. Vi Ses! (We see each other again)

• Author: Hamad Siddiqi
• Date: April 25, 2018

PlatformIO vs Arduino IDE

Hej guuuysss!!!! Today is my turn to write the blog. I would like to share some experience about choosing Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

So, in January, we decided to use Arduino IDE, because it is simple, and official from arduino itself. Then. we wrote the code in a project with several .ino files. The advantage of arduino is, we can split the code into several files without headers to link them. (CONVENIENT!!).

Then, some weeks ago, we, software team (a couple of "not so pro programmer"), learned from our project manager about unit testing, which is a testing for functionality, protocol, algorithm of the software. After that, we started searching and sesarching how to unit test arduino IDE based code. Then we found nothing useful. Two days ago, I found a new IDE called PlatformIO (https://platformio.org). It provides unit testing service (GREAT!!), but it is not free (UGH!!).

Then, I contacted the company asking about the possibility of free trial extension until BEXUS is finished. AAANNNDDD, we got it!! See you on the next blog post!! I will share some experience about unit testing using PlatformIO IDE.

• Author: Muhammad Ansyar Rafi Putra
• Date: April 24, 2018

Wet Dreams

Hej everyone! Second lap here to keep you up to date on mechanical development status. Taking over my previous post, the design of the valve center (the place where we will allocate all the valves dedicated to the new sampling method with bags) is reaching its final stages. On the last talk with our mentors, a mindful idea arose on how to solve the flushing issue of the tube connecting the valves and the bags. It was proposed to use a T interface just before the bags so we can flush the tube with nitrogen before the flight. The latter will allow as to both flush the tubes and test all the valves. Awesome solution, isn't it?

Regarding the valves, a new vendor was found and they have our wet dreams manifold! We are in contact with them to order racks of valves stacked together so no custom-made valve center box is needed. The main task now is to finally determine the sizes of the interfaces we will use, it is pendant while we do not have a serious confirmation from the vendor. Whereas, the custom-made sensor box, where we will allocate all the sensors required for our later science analysis, is going through iterations since it will have to withstand the pumped air (located just after the pump as it can be seen in the image above).

Waiting for a final version of electronics’ schematics so we can start working together on deciding how we arrange all the elements inside the Electronics Box. By the way, today in my home country, Catalonia, we celebrate Saint Jorge (Sant Jordi in catalan). It is the day in which all women are given a rose by her lover and all men receive a book to read, sort of a culture day!

You all know what to do today, spread love and culture ;) Over now, mechanical power!

• Author: Pau Molas Roca
• Date: April 23, 2018

Peaking Inside

Hej hej, good afternoon from the electronics team. Today lets tell you a little bit about the guts of the giant that is TUBULAR. With a current grand total of 17 sensors, 12 valves, two heaters, one pump and an Arduino Due this is one power hungry experiment. To make sure that we have enough power to last for the whole experiment and to also ensure we don't try and grab too much current all at once we came up with a couple of potential solutions.

Solution 1 -> Mooooooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre batteries. Solution 2 -> Find valves that take less power. Solution 3 -> Scrap the pump and send someone up on the gondola with a foot pump instead. Solution 4 -> Use SMPS to simultaneously step down the voltage and step up the current. Solution 5 -> Use sequencing of electrical components so that not everything is on at once.

After swiftly disregarding solution 3 and not wanting the added complexity of solution 1 we decided to use a combination of solutions 2, 4 and 5. After pulling our hair out over valves for weeks we finally managed to track down a valve that doesn't have quite such a crazy power consumption and current draw. Then by having a maximum of two valves open at any one time and ensuring the pump and heaters are never on at the same time our calculations suggest that we will even have power to spare.

But what will we do with the left over power you ask? Well.. that’s classified ;)

• Author: Natalie Lawton
• Date: April 22, 2018

Equations everywhere

Hej says thermal again. For the last week we have been busy with the heat equations. Making sure nothing is forgotten and left for chance when we are going to fly.

You might know the critical parts for a BEXUS flight if not here they come. First we have the time waiting on the launch pad before liftoff. Then comes the ascent where it can get as cold as minus 80 degrees sometimes and will be our coldest case. Then when we have come to around 25km the float will start and while enjoying the view from up above everything will be resting before the descent. In the end of the float will be the hottest case and then it goes down. During descent it is not so critical, free falling how bad can it be? But we are lucky and have a parachute so no free fall all the way. When we finally have landed the last critical part is and that is to not let it get to cold when waiting for recovery.

Now you have read something you might have know or got a new fun fact to tell your friends and family about the critical temperature parts of a BEXUS flight. Until next time.

• Author: Erik Fagerstrom
• Date: April 21, 2018

For testing in development

The Arduino Due and ethernet clock in at a combined weight of 64 grams. A small cog in a much larger machine, the TUBULAR experiment. The experiment takes form and materilizes from our minds into things that arrives in carboard boxes to our mentors office. While the electrical and mechanical peeple get their goodies the software team relies on our old faithful Due to make do.

We're continuing to chisel away on the software. It is as my compatriot said during our talk with our ESA mentors, We have started to code. We have of course done more than that. One thing however we have not yet done is unit testing. Right now our main test of the code been by compiling and checking to see what error messages come our way, which isn't the best methodology to write good, safe code.

Since we have not designed our code to be tested in this manner it will hopefully provide an intresting learning experience. A lot of hard work lies ahead in making it functional but I am committed to make an effort in making unit testing practical.

• Author: Gustav Dyrssen
• Date: April 20, 2018

Unexpected!

Good evening! I am Jorgito from Mechanics. This week has been really busy in our Department! On my way to catch up with all our Asana tasks I've been diving through endless catalogs from various companies trying to figure out how can we build the structure of both boxes without wasting too much money.

Moreover, I've been playing for the first time in my life with ANSYS. Broadly speaking, it's a software that, in one of its modules, allow us to reproduce different load situations on the structure and see how it behaves. So yes, as I'm sure you already know, today's picture is one of the results of these simulations. In particular, the displacement magnitudes of the structure when a load of 2000 kg is applied on the right side of the small box.

Discouraging, isn't it? Apparently it would break. Indeed, looking at one of the other results, the maximum equivalent stress that would appear in the weakest point of our structure is 2484 MPa! It's quite funny when you realise that the Ultimate Tensile Strength of the Aluminum 6501-T5 is 310 MPa, which is the material used to manufacture our components.

What to say... nowadays materials are so weak and whimsical. Do you think that 2000 kg are too much? Let's pray for a good parachute and a soft landing! God help us!

• Author: Jordi Coll
• Date: April 19, 2018

Earth's Atmosphere.

Hej guys! It's Kiki from science team! Today I am going to say some things about our atmosphere and why the altitudes that the balloon will fly, are perfect for our Tubular experiment!

Imagine the atmosphere as a thick blanket of gases, that surrounds earth and stays in place because of the gravity. It is the protector of life, creating pressure that allows water to remain liquid. It consists of Nitrogen, Oxygen, Argon and a small number of other gases. But this is not the only reason why the atmosphere is important. It also absorbs the ultraviolet solar radiation, warming the surface, an effect known as the greenhouse effect. The three major greenhouse gases are water vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane. Earth's natural greenhouse effect is critical to supporting life. Strengthening of the greenhouse effect through human activities is known as anthropogenic greenhouse effect which leads to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and thus, global warming.

And here comes TUBULAR! As you probably already know, the experiment will collect air from the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere, approximately between 15 and 25 km. And it is where one can find the higher concentration of greenhouse gases! Also, the Arctic is of special interest, when it comes to global warming research. Meridional winds, push the greenhouse gases from the equator to the poles, resulting in higher concentrations of greenhouse gases at the poles than any other place!

TUBULAR – Greenhouse Gases, 2-0.

• Author: Kyriaki Blazaki
• Date: April 18, 2018

The newest member

Stop waiting for things to happen, go and make them happen! Thus today’s post will be written by one of the freshly joined member of the TUBULAR team. You got it right, if you may already guessed who I am. Our Project Manager Georger’s post from few days ago already mentioned me along with another crew. If you missed it, fear not, because from now on you will be reading many posts by me, Emily Chen.

I’m a part of the mechanical team and have joined for approximately 11 days ago. I may hold the record for least days joined in this group, but I will certainly give my best performance. My mainly task at the moment is focusing on the conventional AirCore, CAC, which is similar as the lungs in this experiment. Another task is, alternative AirCore, AAC, which consists the sampling bags.

They both have the same function; collecting air at different altitudes in the lower stratosphere. The CAC consists a 300m long stainless steel tube, combining a 200m of 3.175 mm tube and a 100m of 6.35 mm tube, with a valve mounted at each end. During the experiment, one of these valves will be mainly closed. While the second one will stay open for a longer period of time, in order to flush the initial gas in the tube. It will also be intaking of air samples.

As of now, we in the mechanical team are deeming all the components for both the CAC and AAC, in order to get all the necessary parts. At the same time we also need to finalizing the schematic models for both the AirCore systems. Our next step is to build a simple model as soon as possible in order to launch the testing phase.

• Author: Emily Chen
• Date: April 17, 2018

Exciting news!

Hej hej! The bags tests' preparation is on! These last weeks we have been busy trying to find out every detail for the tests, and here I am, updating you… We have decided that there will be two different tests concerning the bags.

The first one will be a test in which we will analyse the stability and holding times of the bags probably combined with condensation. Our main concern is the recovery time and since the BEXUS organizers cannot assure us a recovery in less than 48h, it is our responsibility to test what would happen to our samples if we had to wait more than two days. In addition, the more we wait, the more risks we can have of getting condensation inside the bags due to negative temperatures during the night.

For this test, we will need to fill the bags with calibrated gases. A calibrated gas means that we already know the concentration of gases we are introducing in the bag. Then we will wait for more than 48h to analyse the bags and compare the results with the initial concentration. Regarding the condensation problem, we are studying the possibility to use magnesium perchlorate filters which will trap the water molecules before getting inside the bags and avoid condensation. After analysing the bags with the Picarro analyser, we will check for water vapour content to see if there has been condensation or not.

As you might have noticed, we need a Picarro analyser that we don't have here in Kiruna. But here it comes… The most exciting news! The science team is going to visit the Finnish Meteorological Institute in Sodankylä! And now you must be thinking… What about the second test she mentioned? Well… You will have to wait for my next post to know about the other test!

• Author: Núria Agües Paszkowsky
• Date: April 16, 2018

Here Comes New Challengers!

Hej guys! Project Manager Georges here, back in the microblogging game. What a busy week it's been for everyone as we push to get some schematics done in time for the Critical Design Review at ESTEC. End of May is not that far away!

There's definitely a lot of work left to be done si that's why we now have two new team members who have joined the team. A warm welcome to Emily and Erik!

You're already heard about Erik from the blogpost he published a few days ago. Erik has joined the Thermal Division. As for Emily, she joined the Mechanical Division and you'll hear more about her tomorrow when she publishes her blogpost.

Today's lesson is that when the going gets tough, don't hesitate to reach out for help. There are plenty of cool people out there like Emily and Erik who can save the day. That's it for now folks, over and out.

• Author: Georges L. J. Labrèche
• Date: April 15, 2018

Ambiguity Melting Like Snow

Hej, good readers! This time it's another shout from your friendly neighborhood thermal team! My name is Ivan and when I am not working on BEXUS Thermal, I am on the watch for the Swedish spring approaching. The snow outside is melting quite quickly now...maybe spring will arrive in Kiruna by end of April, who knows? As the surfaces once concealed beneath these thick white blankets now come more into view, so too do our answers to the temperatures we can expect to see throughout the different elements of our experiment!

But just like with nature's tendency to make snow suddenly come back harshly for brief periods when one thinks winter is finally over, so too can cascading errors in calculations derail entire section analyses on paper and in LaTex! For example, while equations for how sunlight heats up our aluminum cover when nothing shields it seem to make sense, temperatures neither too high nor too low from what could be expected (at least in the stratosphere), the results become dramatically higher, if not impossibly hot (well over 100 Celsius) for the aluminum when it is protected beneath a canvas cloth draped over the experiment's gondola frame. The shielding actually gets much hotter than the material responsible for protecting it from incoming radiation!

Something within the formulae being used must clearly not be adding up and this is expected to be resolved really soon! Once this matter is cleared up, then the numerical results will be (hopefully) comparable to the ones gained in the coming weeks from finite element simulations done on our experiment's CAD model (courtesy of our mechanical team).

• Author: Ivan Zankov
• Date: April 14, 2018

Electrical

Hej guys, today I will give you a general overview of the dealings or should I say hardships of the electrical team. Just kidding! If you dare to read the whole blog then you also get to know about some stuff currently going on in the department. The electrical team is responsible to design a foolproof system which can successfully collect the air samples. But, there are many factors which need to be considered to achieve this objective. Some of them are power availability, restrictions due to mechanical design, interfaces between components, available funding and the list goes on. Besides this, we must cope with the slightest change in the design or after each iteration of the experiment review.

These days, the team is working on the schematics, finalizing components list, and budgeting power for the electrical system. The lessons learned by the team thus far enhanced its understanding of the electronics design as well as gained confidence in selecting appropriate components as per requirements. By reading through a large number of data sheets, the team is now able to easily extract and understand technical details.

Keep coming back to read the tubular posts. As the project continues to move toward the Critical Design Review, we will try to keep you guys updated on our problems and design. Thank you for visiting us today and reading my blog.

• Author: Hamad Siddiqi
• Date: April 13, 2018

Designing Ground Station

Hej peeps, I am Ansyar from the software department. Today, I would like to share my experience creating ground station for tubular experiment. The first thing that should be considered is in what platform the ground station will be. We chose matlab-GUI, because it is simple and easy to implement. The second thing is what the experiment needs. For instance, in tubular, we need telecommand control panel, telemetry data panel, status panel, and connection control panel. Next step, placing the panel. I suggest that the panel for data viewer is on the upper left side of the interface, because we usually read things from upper left of the screen. Then the status panel on the right side, and any input panel on the bottom side of the interface. This would make the interface easier to read and user friendly. Ah, one more thing, if possible, put tool-tips for each elements on the interface. The tool-tips should contain brief explanation about the function of the elements.

The most important thing is make your design user friendly and interesting. Put some colors and interactive function. For instance, in tubular ground station, we will have a graph that shows the real time altitude of the experiments which will give us reassurance about the experiment conditions.

That's it for today, have a nice day peeps!!!

• Author: Muhammad Ansyar Rafi Putra
• Date: April 12, 2018

Interfacing

Hej Tubular followers!

This is my first post to the group blog. My name is Pau Molas and I’m from Catalonia! I mainly, but not only, work in the mechanical department, so I’m responsible of the design of our heavy and weak structure output… just kidding.

Since we started this project we have gone through several designs…. more than what we could have expected sadly. Nonetheless, we have learnt that even in sort of “simple” designs one can find himself lost in a loop of infinite iterations and only by teamwork we can get out of it. Right now my work in the mechanical department is focused on determining every little element that we need to connect the sampling bags with the various valves we use, the pump, and lately the outside air. Basically, lots of annoying, and for you boring, fitting interfaces to change from a 0.0000019191324 inches diameter outlet to a 0.00000199 inches diameter inlet. Obviously random numbers.

I will let you know when we have solved that, hope not to get lost in this decimal numbers. From here on, see you in 11 days. Take care and watch out to not breath polluted air, it is disgusting!

• Author: Pau Molas Roca
• Date: April 11, 2018

A Delicate Flower

Hej hej, good afternoon from the electronics team. Today lets introduce you to what is perhaps our most critical component, the lungs of TUBULAR. With the smallest operating temperature range of all of our components and the greediest power consumption it is a demanding and delicate component to work with.

Formally known as NMP 850.1.2 KNDC B and more affectionately known as The Pump this crucial component is responsible for drawing in air from outside the experiment and pumping it into our sampling bags. So, no pump no samples. But this is an avoidable fate.

In order to make sure that the pump operates as expected it will undergo extensive testing. We want to be absolutely certain about how it will perform. Tests will include low pressure, low temperature, power consumption, pump & valve integration, pump & bags integration and maybe even more. It will also be important to check how well the pump responds to being stored at low temperatures and then being asked to turn on as this will be required during flight. As TUBULAR doesn't collect any data during the 2 hour floating phase our pump could get quite chilly if we are not careful. We have been warned by the manufacturers that if we let the pump cool too much we could have startup problems as the plastic diaphragm may be too cold to move. But not to worry, our thermal team are on the case to make sure that this delicate flower is well looked after.

Until next time ^-^

• Author: Natalie Lawton
• Date: April 10, 2018

Team THERMAL do like good weather

Monday, what better time is it to get back and start anew with fresh energy. After a weekend of enjoying the sun and the spring weather it is time for team THERMAL to get back and figure out how we can keep the temperature up for the experiment.

For the moment we in thermal are working on calculating how the October weather will affect the experiment. Checking old BEXUS experiments and statistics to guess the environmental temperature in October. It does come with it’s own problem, for being so far north the possibility of snow already does need to be taken into account. Multiple cases to calculate have to be done and thought off.

During next week we in thermal shall start with simulations to confirm that the electronics will survive whatever weather we have. The sun is a part on the passive thermal control and gives heat to the experiment and also to all of us in team TUBULAR to keep going.

• Author: Erik Fagerstrom
• Date: April 9, 2018

Transmission from the IT department

During this week TUBULARs crack IT team have been busy writing code. The main effort this week was spent experimenting and implementing of the network code for the onboard computer and the groundstation. Since neither of us had any experience with networks it proved to be a worthwhile and fun (while sometimes frustrating) experience.

At the end of the week we have managed to implement both the UDP and TCP protocols. We where worried in the beginning that we would accidentally implement the it wrong and and get one byte per package as we're been told have happened on previous BEXUS flights. While a lot of work remains to finish the Telecommand/telemetry objects I do believe we're on the right track.

Another problem which we have faced this week, that may not be as a big technical challenge, is the design of the graphical user interface for the groundstation. How should we go about in designing an interface that's easy to understand and operate while still allow one to get readings of all the sensors that will be onboard. One option we're discussing right now is to forgo any groundstation and instead have someone operate it manually from the gondola. In any case we will continue the hard work we been putting into the software side side of things.

• Author: Gustav Dyrssen
• Date: April 8, 2018

Bag with a View!

Yesterday, Núria introduced me to you. BUT..... did she tell you all the tortures, oops, I mean stages, team TUBULAR wants to put me through in order to accomplish their goals? Of course not! So here is the truth.

First, they want to run some tests in order to make sure that I can keep their air samples safe. Like it is difficult... I heard them talking about time holds and condensation risk. They will fill me with air and leave me alone in the cold for two days or more. Cruel if you ask me! A BIT OF FAITH IN ME WILL NOT HURT YOU PEOPLE! Gosh! After that... SUMMEEEEEEER! I hope team TUBULAR gets a life and leaves me alone to enjoy the sun as far away from Kiruna as possible!

And here comes the big day! Launch campaign. I am looking fabulous and cool, unlike all these people that walk around anxiously, whispering weird things to each other! I feel sooooo sorry for you humans! Oh, wait! There are some rumors that they are going to squeeze me with their hands to take out any air I have left in me. I hope this is not true, otherwise, I might punch them in the face! Purely instinctively!

I am on the balloon. I feel empty! Now TUBULAR people are looking so excited. Well, I am NOT! Please?! Can anyone hear me? I want to get down! I don't want to go to the Troposphere. Or was it the Stratosphere? Like I know the difference and have to care! Omg, I am moving! Cross your fingers and pray for me! Hope the TUBULAR team knows what they are doing and won't make me burst... I DON'T WANT TO DIEEEE! I AM SO YOUNG!

• Author: Kyriaki Blazaki
• Date: April 6, 2018

TOTALLY TUBULAR!

Did you know about our name? Yes, team TUBULAR doesn't have an acronym but there is a reason for our name! Tubular was a common expression during the 80s to express excitement, happiness or to say that something is really cool.

The other meaning of tubular is related to tube-shaped structures which our original idea of the experiment contained. We had the long-coiled tube (AirCore) and the alternative sampling system composed by canisters. Due to weight reduction and budget reasons we opted for sampling bags instead of canisters, but we are still TUBULAR!

Pay attention folks, these aren't your average day to day snoreville boring bags! The bags we are going to use are Multi-Layer Foil Gas Sampling Bags from RESTEK and they consist of 4 different protective layers that act as a barrier minimising gas permeability. From outer to inner layer we have 60-gauge nylon, polyethylene, 0.0003" aluminium foil, and 0.002" polyethylene. Check out how they look like in the picture! Totally tubular!

• Author: Núria Agües Paszkowsky
• Date: April 5, 2018

ESA Mentor

Guys, guys, guys! Today we had our first conference call with our ESA mentor Grzegorz Izworski! Grzegorz works as an electromechanical instrumentation engineer at ESA in the Engineering Services Section, ESTEC Test Centre Division, Mechanical Department with is within the Directorate of Tech, Eng. & Quality. Being able to frequently interact with an industry expert as he scrutinizes our experiment design is yet another great opportunity that the REXUS/BEXUS programme offers. We spent a solid eye-opening 2 hours reviewing concerns in all aspects of the project and learning from an expert on how to better approach building the finer details of our experiment. We're now extra motivated to get stuff built the right way. Let's do it!

• Author: Georges L. J. Labrèche
• Date: April 4, 2018

Microblogging

Hej people, Project Manager Georges here again and we're microblogging like nobody's business! Guys, I told you we would target daily posts and look at us succeeding (so far). Truth be told, there is some pretty solid reasoning behind this blogging format, let me explain why.

On the glorious day of December 8, 2017, we received an e-mail from the folks over at ESA Education informing us that our experiment had been selected to participate in the cycle 11 of the REXUS/BEXUS Programme. Great memories. This was 118 days ago. One of the crucial activities we must engage in throughout our project is outreach and visibility and it's pretty lamentable that it's taken us all this time to put up a respectable website and start posting updates. What gives?

We're all pretty crazy busy juggling between BEXUS and our respective Master programmes that we tend to not prioritize certain things like, I dunno, building a website. Even though the website is up and running now, our team members are still going to be super busy all the time thus reducing the likelihood that appropriate time will be allocated for traditional blogpost writing. The solution? Throw tradition outta here and embrace microblogging! It only takes a few minutes and if we take turns we can produce new content every day. Effeciently working with the limited resources we have at our disposable – booyashaka laka laka, whoever is project managing this puppy knows the deal!

• Author: Georges L. J. Labrèche
• Date: April 4, 2018

First Post

Hej people! Project Manager Georges here publishing the first post in our long overdue project website update. We're not only talking online facelift here but full on microblogging support. What's the difference between microblogging and blogging, you ask? We'll, we're aiming for frequent and short posts instead of sparse and long ones. We're talking about daily min/max 100/300 word count in-your-face status updates that will even bewilder our most severely shortest attention spanned readers. For now though, enjoy the above team picture, you can spot me as the tallest dude. Stay tuned!

• Author: Georges L. J. Labrèche
• Date: April 3, 2018