Members of our team at EuRoC 2023

Our year 2023

In time for the new year, we want to take a look back at the year past. We have learned so much and grown beyond ourselves. We were able to celebrate many successes, the small ones as well as some bigger ones. We made incredible progress in all teams, gained new experiences and have now reached a new and exciting point in our association’s work.

But let’s take a look at everything from January 2023 on:

At the beginning of the year, we organized our first networking event in cooperation with Starthaus Bremen & Bremerhaven – and it was a complete success. We received so much positive feedback that we are now organizing this type of an event on a regular basis. 

In the meantime, our technical teams have finalized many manufacturing and production processes and completed some important rocket parts. For example, the Structure team produced the final CFRP-reinforced tank. And our Aerodynamics team simulated the trajectory and designed our fins. 

From April 2023, the major test phase of our rocket subsystems began. We carried out the first Hotfire test in the DLR institute of Space Propulsion at Lampoldshausen. We tested the propulsion of our rocket and the load capacity of our tank. 

Meanwhile, the recovery team tested our parachute at the wind tunnel test facility of TU Delft, Netherlands. There, the parachute and the ejection system were tested in a wind tunnel at a maximum speed of 100 km/h for stability and tear resistance. We were also able to celebrate our first major success of the year there: our parachute works! 

Of course, our avionics team was also involved in all these and other tests. They constantly developed the flight computer further and put the individual parts together.

In the summer, we then set off for a second hot-fire test, again at the DLR in Lampoldshausen. There we experienced another great success: we had a successful blowdown with 10s thrust with an average of 2.2 kN. Our tank also withstood a pressure of 90 bar.

On top of all these successes, we had the great opportunity to travel Portugal to take part in the annual EuRoC rocket competition. Although we were, unfortunately, unable to launch our rocket there, we were able to gain many insights into the work of other teams, receive professional feedback on our design, and see other rockets being launched. 

We are especially happy about the amazing report in Buten un Binnen that shows our attendance at EuRoC and presents our association in a vivid and authentic way. We would like to thank Anna-Lena Borchert once again for this wonderful opportunity! 

Back in Germany, we kicked off our next networking event in cooperation with Starthaus Bremen & Bremerhaven, this time focusing on sustainability in space. We were delighted to welcome guests such as Holger Oelze (CEO ZARM Technik AG), Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Michal Kucera (University Bremen) and Siegfried Monser (Space Co-Ordinater Bremen). The discussions and exchanges with people from business, science, politics and society were incredibly enriching. 

Towards the end of the year we started designing our new rocket. We want to launch this at EuRoC 2024. We have incorporated the feedback and other requirements and are now implementing this in our new designs. 

We were also able to attend the Space Tech Expo in Bremen for the third time in a row and share our enthusiasm for space with people from all over the world. 

At the end of the year, we said farewell to our old executive board and re-elected them. We would like to thank our former board for their supportive work over the past year and wish the members who are leaving us all the best! We are very grateful to welcome two new, extremely committed members to the board and look forward to your ideas and suggestions! 

We would also like to thank our sponsors very much. Without your material, informational, and financial support we would not have been able to do any of this!

We are incredibly excited about the year 2024 ahead of us, to all the challenges we will overcome and all the successes we will celebrate. See you in one year! 

Our booth at STE 2023

Space Tech Expo 2023

There is a saying in Bremen: “Drei Mal ist Bremer Recht” (translated: Three times is Bremen law). In line with this, we had the opportunity, and seemingly the Bremen social responsibility, to exhibit at the Space Tech Expo for the third time this year. In recent years, we have been able to make an incredible number of contacts, gain experience and exchange ideas with experts. This time of the year we get to meet many of our collaborators, partners, sponsors and fellow rocketeers. The knowledge exchange we have is an unparalleled experience thereby making it one of the most exciting events of the year for ASTRA e.V to look forward to. A huge shoutout to Gordon McHattie for his constant support for our presence at the Expo each year!

So, we set up our booth again this year and took part in Europe’s biggest aerospace trade fair. With more than 7,500 visitors, we were able to spend three days in a row talking, gathering ideas and sharing our enthusiasm for space. This year was very special for us: We were able to exhibit the rocket we built for the first time! Explaining our design, the function and the construction of individual parts was much easier as our assembled rocket was displayed in the booth itself. At the same time, we were able to get direct feedback from colleagues, managers, engineers, scientists and many more. This is, of course, super valuable and constructive for us. As we are currently working on a design for our new rocket, Karma 2.0, having this feedback gives us the opportunity to receive and implement suggestions, ideas and criticism directly.

In addition to lots of ideas and incredibly great conversations, the Space Tech Expo means one thing: lots of fun! Of course, we also enjoy walking around and looking at innovative exhibitors, testing out fun offers or listening to exciting talks. After all, that’s what brings us all together at Space Tech Expo: endless interest and enthusiasm for space!

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Working with Buten un Binnen – A thousand thanks!

A thousand thanks: working with Buten un Binnen 

ASTRA e.V. has existed for more than two years now. Since then we have met more and more people who have listened to our idea and our passion. We were able to infect many with our enthusiasm for practice, rockets and teamwork. Among them was Anna-Lena Borchert. She is a journalist at Buten un Binnen in Bremen and learned about us through Dirk from Radio Bremen. She was touched by the idea of our group of students who are passionate about building rockets and devote all their time and heart and soul to it. So she decided to contact us.  

In one of our monthly meetings she had for the first time the opportunity to meet us all personally and to experience our team spirit and our enthusiasm for our association. After that she accompanied us on many steps further and also helped us a lot with knowledge about film documentation. Through her we got the great opportunity to present ourselves in a short video on TV and to show the idea of our association. A thousand thanks to you Anna-Lena for believing in us and spending so much time accompanying us on our way in the last months. 

Want to see the video? Then click here:
https://www.butenunbinnen.de/videos/studierende-bauen-rakete-100.html 

Anna-Lena also made it possible for us to have an article at Tagesschau. You can find it here:
Bremen: So will eine Bremer Studenten-Gruppe ins Weltall vordringen | tagesschau.de 

Members of our team at EuRoC 2023

Our first attendance at EuRoC

Anyone who reads our website, talks to us, or receives a flyer from us knows directly: We want to reach outer space. We want to build a rocket that flies to 103.6 km, thus crossing the border to space. To achieve this, we are developing and building all the systems for a rocket which can achieve this lofty goal. 

But of course, safety is our top priority. That’s why it was clear to us from the very beginning that we would not simply launch our first rocket straight to 100 km. So what do we do? We decided to build a smaller rocket to test all of our systems and the design overall. This scaled down rocket would “only” reach an altitude of about 3 km, but will give us the opportunity to test technology and gain the experience we need to reach our final target. Accordingly, we are focused on building this smaller rocket KARMA. 

Over the last few months we have been working very hard to get closer and closer to this goal. We have completed many components, conducted countless tests of individual systems, and have also learned lots in the process. Then we applied to EuRoC 2023. EuRoC is a Europe-wide competition for student groups that build rockets. There you can launch different types of rockets to different target heights (3km and 9km). The rocket that most accurately reaches the designated target altitude wins the competition in its category 

After a long application period and a lot of preparation, a part of our team traveled to Portugal on October 7th – together with our 3m long rocket in our luggage. On site, many more tests were carried out and our rocket was fully assembled. Our engineers tried to implement as much feedback as possible in the short time and to improve and eliminate shortcomings in the rocket. Unfortunately, the time during the competition was not enough to change as much of the design as would have been necessary for a launch. Our launch was cancelled and our ASTRAnauts traveled back to Bremen. 

Of course, the trip to Portugal wasn’t for nothing. In the short time before and during EuRoC, we were able to make an incredible amount of progress in the development of our rocket. Through many tests we got a lot of opportunities to optimize details of our rocket. We will now collect the feedback we have received and take the time to incorporate it into our next design with one goal: to launch our rocket KARMA successfully in 2024!  

If you want to watch a short video about us at EuRoC, click here:

https://www.butenunbinnen.de/videos/studierende-bauen-rakete-100.html 

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Successful start – three Bremen initiatives create meeting space for space enthusiasts

The organizers counted around 65 participants at the first matchmaking event for aerospace, which took place last Thursday at the Digital Hub Industry (DHI) in Bremen. With this, the organizers – the Starthaus Bremen and the DHI in cooperation with ASTRA e.V. – have already achieved two of their three goals. At the first meeting of this kind, not only were local companies, associations and groups related to space travel able to present themselves. There was also a lively exchange and professional discussions. 

Bremen is one of the top locations for aerospace in Europe. With more than 140 companies and 20 institutes in and around Bremen, the region is an important innovative location for space technologies. It is therefore no surprise that Bremen is also one of the few locations in Germany where young people can study space technology with a variety of specializations. This broad offering is a particular advantage of the location, but also brings with it some challenges.

So far, there are hardly any places where young scientists* from the engineering-technological field can have a professional and interdisciplinary exchange. Yet the young professionals are also looking for precisely such connections with each other and interdisciplinarily with other fields such as law, economics, logistics or biology. Because they want to combine innovation and sustainability. Having a space to develop prototype rockets, launchers, mini-satellites or other technologies themselves would be another big plus for Bremen as a location for the international community. It is precisely this kind of networked work, coupled with dedicated minds, that is urgently needed by the growing space industry.

In order to establish this link, we at ASTRA e.V. organized a matchmaking event in cooperation with the Starthaus Bremen & Bremerhaven and the Digital Hub Industry (DHI). First, the Starthaus and we introduced ourselves. This was followed by three different young start-ups from Bremen: Women in Aerospace, Astrait and Iorbit showed the whole breadth of what aerospace encompasses in their presentations. Well-known faces from industry and business also contributed. For example, guests included Holger Oelze (Managing Director of ZARM Technik AG) and Janusz Heitmann (DLR). Prof. Dr. Antonia Garcia from Bremens University of Applied Sciences emphasized the importance of such a bridge between young talent and companies or research. It was not just a matter of following lectures, but of getting to know each other in an open setting, exchanging ideas and developing ideas together. 

After the stage program, there was time for discussion and lively exchange. In the process, we were able to make important contacts and find supporters. All in all, the event was a complete success with more than 60 active participants. Our conclusion is very unanimous: “This is exactly what we need. We’ll definitely repeat it.”

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ASTRA e.V. at Space Tech Expo 2022

The biggest exhibition for the space industry of Europe “SpaceTechExpo” took place in Bremen again in November 2022 and ASTRA e.V. got to be one of the exhibitors!
Every year this expo attracts exhibitors from the big players to small startups of the space industry who would like to present their ideas to an interested audience. This year was a special for members of space related student groups, because there was a group of booths at the SpaceTechExpo just for us!

Preparation for this event went smoother, because we already participated in 2021 and learned a lot from this. It was especially exciting displaying all of our new hardware protypes we were able to build in the last year. For the first time we had most of the final rocket parts to show to the public and this not only helped us getting more attention from curious persons, but also we got feedback and suggestions from some professionals or colleagues from other student groups.
Directly next to our booth there was the Dutch student group DARE and the Swiss student group ARIS as well presenting their projects. Talking with everybody at the SpaceTechExpo in person with the hardware directly next to us turned out to be very valuable! This lead to new testing opportunities e.g. for the drop test we got support from KST regarding this and from DARE with their wind tunnel.

In the end these three days were tightly packed for us at ASTRA e.V. with booth duty, B2B meetings and talking to other people at their booth. But it was absolutely worth the efforts!

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Introducing our new Executive Board

ASTRA e.V. members elected the new executive board of inspired and driven people who will shape the future of this organisation. We are looking at an exciting year ahead which will include the beginning of our manufacturing and testing stage, the beginning of our fundraising and marketing campaign as well as a lot to be done to build meaningful cooperations for ASTRAs future.

Mika Bauerfeind is the new CEO of ASTRA. He is currently in his third semester of the Space Engineering Master Program at Uni Bremen and has been with us from our very beginning in early 2021. Mika has been an integral part of the Project Management Team throughout and filled the role of Deputy CEO in the previous tenure of our executive board.

Introducing our new Executive Board

Mika Bauerfeind – CEO of ASTRA e.V.

“I am working with ASTRA because it is a unique opportunity to gain practical experience you simply do not get in your studies. It also really motivates me to work in a team with all our dedicated and hard-working members to accomplish our target, reaching the Karman-Line.”

Our two Deputy CEOs are Jesaiah Coy and Taha Merchant.

Jesaiah Coy is a Space Engineering Student in his third semester at Uni Bremen. He Has been with ASTRA from the very beginning in early 2021 and has been our Chief Engineer and part of the Mission Management ever since. His vision of Project Karman and extensive knowledge make him an invaluable member of this organisation.

Jesaiah Coy – Deputy CEO of ASTRA e.V.

“I am excited to continue pioneering the journey of our rocket group to the Karman Line as part of the ongoing effort to democratize access to Space.”

Taha Merchant is in his third semester of the Space Engineering Master Program at Uni Bremen. He has been with ASTRA from the very start and is the Leader of the propulsion team. With his positive nature and relentless work ethic we are delighted to have him on board and form the future of ASTRA with his help.

Taha Merchant -Deputy CEO of ASTRA e.V.

“I am excited to join the Astra board as I have always had a very optimistic belief in Astra’s capabilities as a team and I hope to help it take one step further.”

Arne Stemme is our new Chief Financial Officer. He is studying economics in his Bachelor and joined ASTRA in Oktober 2021. He is the head of Marketing and also leads the fundraising campaign. Arne brings exceptional experience and Know-How that will take ASTRA to a new level and will make the realisation of Project Karman possible. We are excited to see how he will shape ASTRA and its future.

Arne Stemme – CFO of ASTRA e.V.

“My passion has always been to take on complex challenges, from the development of an idea to its implementation. Be it the development of a gutter cleaner as part of a contest or the management of a fictitious bank in a banking simulation game. The business game gave me an exciting insight into the world of business and finance. Now it’s time to put the theory from business administration studies into practice.”

Lotta Dräger is the new secretary of ASTRA. She is in her third semester of the Space Sciences and Technologies Master Program at Uni Bremen and has been with ASTRA from the beginning in early 2021. Throughout her time at ASTRA Lotta has been a valuable member of the Project Management Team and filled the role of secretary in the last tenure of the board already.

Lotta Dräger – Secretary of ASTRA e.V.

“There are few things more exhilarating than working with driven and like-minded people on a passion project. At ASTRA we have just that and I am thrilled to be a part of this team and make our vision a reality.”

We would like to take this opportunity to introduce one more important position in ASTRA here:

Sahana Shastry is our Chief Operation Officer.

She is in her final semester of the Master Program Space Sciences and Technologies at the Uni Bremen. Sahana has been working with ASTRA since June 2021, with her focus area being operations and testing. She has been working relentlessly and is an invaluable member of our core management structure. We are so excited to see what the future holds and how she will impact ASTRAs future.

Sahana Shastry – COO of ASTRA e.V.

“My main motivation comes from seeing the project through the many phases and ensuring the aspect of all the subsystems coming together to achieve the mission objectives.”

As you might have guessed – we are very excited about this team and what we can achieve together. The next year will bring a lot of challenges but everyone at ASTRA is ready and eager to get to work. Even though this post is meant to introduce you to our new management, we always like to point out that we need all 40 students contributing to ASTRA to make Project Karman possible and are thrilled to have so many great minds at work. Thanks to all the support and hard work from everyone we have come a long way already. This does not mean we are close to be done though – we are only getting started..

So let’s get to work and Expand our Horizons!