We are a team of 11 interdisciplinary students from Bremen University who got together to apply for the DLR (German Aerospace Center) “Überflieger” competition. Our experiment FORALEX (FORAminifera Low earth orbit EXperiment) will analyze the behavior and shell growth formation of foraminifera (short: forams), some very tiny marine organisms, under micro gravity. Forams were found to have useful applications in various scientific fields which could be of interest for future long term space campaigns.
After not being chosen in the final round at “Ueberflieger” by DLR, we are now participating at the REXUS/BEXUS programme with FORAREX (FORAminifera Rocket EXperiment) to evaluate foraminfera under microgravity for a short period of time.
REXUS/BEXUS chose us to be one of the teams participating at project cycle 26. Finally our foraminifera are going to travel to space – in spring 2019 the sounding rocket will launch from ESRANGE Space Centre with our experiment on board.