The students are challenged to imagine how the physical and operational environment on board the ISS could benefit their experiments. Parameters to consider include the absence of gravity, the vacuum of outer space, the high altitude above the Earth, and the isolated environment in which the astronauts live and work.

The aim of the contest is to turn students of today into Space Station users of tomorrow, sparking and developing an interest in seeing research in space as possible even for those still in education. For the 2002 contest experiment proposals were invited in disciplines as diverse as life sciences, physical sciences, space sciences, technology and Earth observation.

The students entering SUCCESS 2002 had to go through three phases. They first had to write an essay describing their experiment. A scientific board selected the best essays to move on to the second phase of the competition. Exactly 100 students entered the first phase and submitted essays. Nineteen came from universities in the United Kingdom, 18 from Italy, 13 from Germany, 8 from Russia, 7 from France, 4 from Finland, 4 from the Netherlands, 3 each from Belgium, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Hungary, 2 from Bulgaria and 1 each from Canada, India, Switzerland, the USA, Rumania, the Czech Republic and Belorus.

In a second phase 40 of the 100 initial participants were selected and invited to visit ESA's space research and technology centre, ESTEC, in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, in November 2002. Ten were from Italy, 8 from the United Kingdom, 4 from France, 4 from Germany, 3 from Sweden, 2 each from the Netherlands, Norway, Russia and Bulgaria, and 1 each from Finland, Portugal and Spain. During the visit they learned about ESA in general, the
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Contact: Ulf Merbold
Ulf.Merbold@esa.int
31 71 565 4820
European Space Agency
29-Aug-2003