Hungarian product in space: FOCUS

SURE: (International Space Station: a Unique REsearch infrastructure) project was an opportunity for scientists and SMEs in new EU Member States to do research on the ISS. The selection of proposals was made by ESA and 10 from 32 were granted. The best industrial proposal was written by Admatis Ltd and 3 other winners were Hungarian. SURE project is fully funded by EC under the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6).

THE EXPERIMENT: During the experiment the astronaut fix the box that contains the cartridges. With a simple movement the illumination system is switched on and the foams start to grow. When the amount of foams approach a given level the astronaut stops the foaming and observes the structure changes.

THE AIM of the project is to study the foaming process and foam stability in aqueous system under microgravity in order to establish the development of metal foam production technology. The innovation is the foam generator that is the key of our success. The behaviour of this important part and the evolved foam has to be observed for 2 hours in microgravity and this requires the experiments on board of the International Space Station (ISS). The details of this project are confidential.

Russian cargo spaceship PROGRESS 36P (M-04M) is scheduled to launch in 3rd February 2010, at 7:00AM Baikonur time, with Soyuz rocket. Our FOCUS materials science experiment hardware will fly on this spaceship to the ISS. PROGRESS shall dock on 5th February and the FOCUS Experiment Container will be moved on the same day to the Columbus Module, where the experiment is planned to be carried out. Experiment executor shall be Jeffrey N. Williams astronaut. One of our colleagues will follow the experiment together with the USOC operators in the case of any communication needed between ADMATIS and the astronaut.

The foam generating was successfull in morning 07.02.2010 on board of ISS. Jeffrey Williams has just started the FOCUS experiment in Columbus module and it seems everything is working!!!

The Hungarian Space Cluster and the Hungarian Space Office

kindly invite you to the

SME4SPACE – 2009

Conference

10th of November 2009

9:00 - 16.30

Budapest

National Office for Research and Technology

Conference Hall

1/C Neumann J. street

Please register to this event before the 30th of October at

This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

The language of the conference is English

Dr. Pál Bárczy Dr. Előd Both

Hungarian Space Cluster Hungarian Space Office

Chairman Director

8.45 – 9.00 Registration

9.00 – 9.40 Welcome

Kálmán Kovács Hungarian Space Research Council, Chairman

Dr. Gyula Csopaki National Office for Research and Technology, Chairman

Presentations:

9.40 – 10.00 Inaugural

Dr. Pál Bárczy Hungarian Space Cluster, Chairman

10.00 – 10. 30 SME4SPACE aimes, tasks, past, present, future

Giovanni Sylos Labini SME4SPACE Chairman

10.30 – 11.00 Coffee break

11.00 – 11.30 About the ESA SME Policy

11.30 – 12.00 Questions of co-operations between EC-ESA and connection

possibilities for SMEs

Etelka Barsiné Pataky Hungarian Chambers of Engineers, President

12.00 – 13.00 Lunch break

13.00 – 13.30 Results of the first ESA AO tender restricted to the

Czech Republic.

Petr Baresh Czech Space Alliance, Chairman

13.30 – 14.00 Introducing the Polish space activities

Bartosz Buszke Polish Space Technology Platform, Chairman

14.00 – 14.30 Presentation about the Slovenian space activities

Dr. Ales Mihelic Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology,

General Director

14.30 – 15.00 Romanian space activities

Ms. Anca-Liana Racheru Project manager for ESA related Technology and SME activities

15.00 – 15.30 Coffee break

15.30 – 16.00 The Hungarain Space Office and the SMEs of the national space industry

Dr. Előd Both Hungarian Space Office, Director

16.00 – 16.30 The contribution of the Hungarian Space Cluster to the future of industrial co-operation with ESA

Dr. Pál Bárczy Hungarian Space Cluster, Chairman

SME4SPACEinvitation_1.pdf