Szymon Krawczuk discusses space projects on the programme "Nauka Mówi" | Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Ship Technology at the Gdańsk University of Technology

These will be detailed publications regarding the design of measurement experiments in the HEDGEHOG project, a publication on GDArms, as well as other presentations.

• HEDGEHOG - High Quality Experiment Dedicated to microGravity Exploration, Heat flow, and Oscillation measurement from Gdańsk aimed to investigate the thermal-dynamic environment of a rocket. Why such an experiment? The reason was simple. In the available scientific literature at the time, vibrations in such rockets had not been described in detail from a frequency perspective. The available measurements were conducted within the range of several tens of Hz. We measured vibration parameters in the rocket with frequencies in the kHz range. This is significantly more and allows us to better understand what these vibrations actually look like – said Szymon Krawczuk.

The project leader was Adam Dąbrowski, and it was co-created by Jacek Goczkowski and Karol Pelzner.

Another initiative discussed by Szymon Krawczuk was the GDArms project. – This was, in a sense, the reverse of HEDGEHOG. HEDGEHOG studied what happens during the flight of a sounding rocket. With GDArms, we set ourselves the opposite problem. We wanted to achieve similar values, but without using a rocket – to make a "rocket without a rocket." We created a setup to simulate the rocket environment. It consisted of a device of our own design, which combined a thermal vacuum chamber with a properly controlled vibration exciter. This device was placed in a hyper-gravitational centrifuge. The centrifuge – by analogy to a car – simulated the “pressing into the seat” associated with the acceleration of the rocket in its forward motion, while the vibration exciter simulated the vibrations accompanying this motion, which occur, for example, due to the friction between the rocket and the atmosphere. We managed to achieve satisfactory results – emphasized Szymon Krawczuk.

Szymon Krawczuk was interviewed by Magdalena Maszewska, an educator at Hevelianum and an astronomer. In the programme, the student also discussed why it is worth engaging in student projects and presented the interesting programs for students offered by the European Space Agency.

The entire conversation can be listened to on Hevelianum's YouTube channel.

"Nauka Mówi" is a monthly series of discussions with scientists, experts, and science communicators about the impact of science on the world around us, the opportunities and possibilities that lie in the development of science and technology, and socially important issues. The event is part of the "SPINaj naukę" project, an initiative by the Society and Science Association (SPIN), which co-creates Hevelianum. It is also part of the celebrations of the 410th anniversary of the birth of Jan Heweliusz, the patron of Hevelianum and one of the most prominent figures in the world of 17th-century science.