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A unique program between Canada and Norway allows Canadian students to participate in a week long educational exchange with students learning payload instrument design on a sounding rocket. The program called the Canada-Norway Student Sounding Rocket (CaNoRock) exchange is a partnership between the Universities of Alberta, Calgary and Saskatchewan, the University of Oslo and the Andoya Rocket Range in Norway.
Canada’s ambassador to Norway, Mr. John Hannaford, officially opened the CaNoRock program when he signed the 10 year memorandum of understanding at a ceremony at Andoya Rocket Range on January 20th.
This January marked the third exchange for the program as the Canadian students went to the Andoya Rocket Range in Norway between the 17th to the 21st of January. The program consist of a daily series of lectures, hands on design and technology development and rocket or balloon launch simulations and culminates with a launch of a sounding rocket. Students will have designed and tested their respective payloads and will have the opportunity to learn how to integrate, launch, monitor and analyze both rocket launch data as well as data from their experiments. The student built sounding rocket CaNoRock-3 “Aurora Arrow” was launched on January 20th reaching an altitude of about 9 kilometers after 35 seconds. It took the students several days to build the rocket, but the entire flight was over after about 85 seconds.
The program is supported by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund of the University of Alberta. According to the CSA recent contributions made to the University of Alberta have allowed the development of a dedicated lab for undergraduate students where students will learn to develop their own payloads. The lab will be made available to students at the three participating Canadian institutions. A component of the CaNoRock program will be integrated a into a relevant course.
The program is designed to attract students to pursue further graduate study programs and eventually to benefit the aerospace industry.
