Friday 18/02/2016 and Saturday 19/02/2016
The last day of the training week started with
sessions on how the prepare for the next phase, the critical design review
(CDR). We were also given the chance to
provide feedback on the programme, presentations and workshops of the past
days. In the afternoon we headed down to Kiruna to
visit the mining facilities and we went 540 meter underground!
At 15:30 we went back to sunlight and headed up
to the city center of Kiruna. Due to the mining, part of the city will need to
move to another part Kiruna. Including the church shown in the picture below.
Our last
stop in Kiruna was the famous ice hotel. It’s even possible to get married in
an ice chapel!
No need for
ice cubes at the ice hotel, the glass is one complete ice cube!
When we got
back from the visit to the city of Kiruna, the staff of ESRANGE setup the
farewell dinner! We shared the table with our Polish friends from the DREAM
team and Basque friends from the ACORDE team, and ESA expert Paolo!
Dinner was finished, so it was time for the
judging of the snow sculpture contest. In the beginning of the week it was
announced that there would be a snow sculpture contest only using organic
elements. It was not obligatory but team OSCAR also decided to participate. Our
sculpture represented the sun as OSCAR involves solar cells. The nose has a
diamond shape, referring to the diamond magnetometer, and was donated by the
Polish Dream team.
The sculptures of the other teams were very
nice to see. Our Czech friends from the PREDATOR team made an airplane with a
cat on the wings. They
even incorporated reindeer “tic tac” into the sculpture!
On saturday the PDR week was
officially finished. Tim left on Saturday as he needed to travel back to
Dresden, while the others were allowed to stay until Sunday at ESRANGE. Luckily
Jarda did not forget to dig out the magnetometer the evening before leaving!
After a good dinner, prepared
by Ilaria, they all enjoyed the fire place.
