Representatives of the world space agencies reported their desire to study at Samara University summer school

The selection for XIV international space summer school "Perspective space technologies and experiments in space" began. It is organised and held by Inter-University Department of Space Research of Samara University annually.

Samara University is the only one in Russia, where spacecraft of nano type are being developed, created, tested and exploited. In the period of summer school the students guided by the lecturers can go all the way of nano satellite creation - from the mission idea to the construction of the apparatus. Thus, in two weeks the participants study not only theoretical basis of technologies, necessary for the creation of spacecraft of nano type, but get necessary engineering skills.

This year not only students, young scientists and specialists of the leading universities and world Research and Development centres, but representatives of space agencies and politicians as well declared their desire to become participants of the summer school. President of Tunisia space agency Karim Hamid and member of Iranian Parliament Ramin Nurkolipur are among them.   

On 16 March the organising committee registered 212 applications from 34 countries. The maximum number of applications was received from Latin America - Brazil, Peru and Mexico. Samara University cooperates closely with Latin American and Russian Association ALAR. The ALAR mission is to set the scholarly, academic and cultural exchange with Russia in the interests of young Latin American specialists. One of the major partners of ALAR is Samara University as one of the leading Russian aerospace universities.

Young specialists from Europe are also interested in studying at space summer school. 40 students from the universities of Italy, Spain, Germany, Netherlands, France holding high positions in the authoritative QS World University Rankings, made annually by the British company Quacquarelli Symonds, declared their intention to "sit at the desk" at Samara University this year.  

"In comparison with the last year, when 170 participants from 25 countries were registered, the competition has grown to up to five people per place. This will allow forming a qualitative composition of listeners and will create conditions for strengthening academic mobility and formation of international projects in the sphere of creation and use of nano-satellites", - Igor Belokonov, head of the school and Samara University Inter-University Department of Space Research, made the point.

On 26 March the two-week part-time stage of the school was launched. In this time the participants are going to have the distant training and will do the test tasks. As a result of the rigid selection for studying Samara University will host 40 most trained finalists. The on-site stage of the school will be held from 19 August to 1 September in Samara.

For reference

The first international space summer school was in 2003 with the active participation of European Space Agency. In 15 years it has grown into a strong education project that enables talented youths from all over the world not only to be engaged into experimental activity for solution of research tasks, but to realise their ideas in practice. So, the international project of wire system YES2, which was realised in 2007 during the flight of spacecraft "Photon-M3", was developing within the school. In 2016 the idea of the joint project with the Higher National School of Aviation and Cosmonautics - ISAE-SUPAERO (Toulouse, France) emerged. The idea of group flight of two nano-satellites, which would process new space technologies, connected with active manoeuvring, exchange of information via low altitude communication networks, problems of atmosphere entry before the stage of structural breakup, etc., was discussed within this initiative. 

The organisers of the space summer school are Samara National Research University, RSC "Progress", Volga Regional Branch of Russian Academy of Cosmonautics named after Tsiolkovsky.

The school is being held with the support of the administrative committee on space universities of International Astronautical Federation as well as Samara branch of international consortium of space universities (UNISEC Samara).

The universities in the QS World University Ranking and the ones, having applied for the space summer school-2018 are the following: