University of Calgary
Rocket man
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Student blasts off to rocket school
Benjamin Blumer will learn how to build and launch sounding rockets.It’s a good thing Benjamin Blumer will be dealing with rockets and not rock music. His roommates were recently awoken by the fourth-year physics student belting out a song of “I’m going to Norway,” after receiving an email telling him he’d been accepted into the Canadian-Norway Rocket Exchange (CaNoRock) program.“When I was young, I liked to build stuff,” says the 20-year-old Blumer. “Everyone told me to go into engineering, but I liked the purity of physics over engineering.” Blumer will fly to Norway to build and launch sounding rockets as part of a class offered by the University of Oslo. Joining him for the intense, week-long course running from Nov. 9-13 are four other students: two undergrads from the University of Saskatchewan as well as one undergrad and one grad student from the University of Alberta. In Norway, Blumer and the others will learn about payload instrument design and see hands-on how to construct and launch sounding rockets. A sounding rocket carries instruments which take measurements, and performs scientific experiments during sub-orbital flight. The rockets, electronics, sensors and various systems built by the students will be launched from the Andoya Rocket Range on a northern island in Norway. They will travel at a height of about 10 kilometres and take various readings such as temperature and pressure levels. The Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research and the Canadian Space Agency are covering the costs of Blumer’s exchange. David Knudsen, associate professor in the physics and astronomy department, helped establish the program at the University of Calgary and selected the winner from seven applications. “I was looking at third and fourth-year students,” says Knudsen. “And someone with an A-B range GPA. We want to put our best foot forward.” Blumer says he became interested in rocket science just recently and that being exposed to a field that you know nothing about is part of its appeal. “There are a lot of commercial possibilities and these possibilities will continue to grow,” he says. “Looking at grad school, this is the best way to see what rocket science is really like.” Knudsen says this class is going to give Blumer a rare window in this research area. The U of C has been a world leader in space instrumentation for more than 40 years.
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October 28, 2009