Spicing up your space education with cansats, rockets and hackathons: the SUN Recipe Book

The UK-based “Space Universities Network” (SUN) was formed in 2016 with the aim of enhancing the quality of learning and teaching by providing support and resources to the space science and engineering higher education community. It now has 60 members from 30 different Universities around the UK. SUN’s objectives are to facilitate the creation of a skilled workforce of graduates who can meet the challenges of future scientific and commercial exploitation of space. The network addresses this need by helping to inspire students to join the space sector and ensuring they are well equipped at University to contribute. SUN enables the developing, sharing and promotion of effective practice and innovation in the delivery of university-level space science and engineering curricula. One of the ways that effective practice and innovation is disseminated is by the collection of case studies. In this paper, a collection of case studies from different members of the network is described.
The case studies cover a wide variety of student activities run by staff and/or students including Satellite in a SodaCan (CanSat) competitions, water rocket and rocket building, earth observation data hackathons, astrodynamics workshops using GMAT software, lunar rover model building, cubesat projects, remote microscope investigation of samples, satellite applications data workshops and ESA ‘drop your thesis’ projects. For each case study, those running the activity completed a standard format template of 1-3 pages which describes: What was the purpose? How was it integrated into the curriculum (if at all)? How did it work? What materials do you need and how much did it cost in time and money? What problems were encountered? What feedback did you have? The paper describes each case study briefly. These are now publicly available on the SUN website (spaceuniversitiesnetwork.ac.uk) and are accessible to all. More cases studies are welcome and are being submitted. It is hoped that these will inspire other Universities who wish to spice up their space courses with some interesting recipes!