PARIS, March 20 (UPI) -- The European Space Agency has identified a Norwegian student as the first-place winner of its annual student competition.
The 2006 competition, with a first-place prize of a one-year ESA internship, challenged European university students to propose original ideas for an experiment to fly on the International Space Station. More than 80 entries were received, with the proposals covering a wide variety of fields, including physical sciences, interior design and advanced robotics.
A jury selected three prize winners, with the first prize going to a cosmic radiation experiment proposed by Haakon Lindekleiv, a student at the University of Tromso. He will receive a one-year internship at the ESA's research and technology center in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.
The second prize was awarded Daniel Brandt from the University of Leicester for his proposal for a passive low-cost nanometeoroid detector for the ISS. The third prize went to Cornelia Meyer of Humboldt University in Germany. She proposed placing an artificial meteorite outside the ISS to verify a theory regarding the origins of life on Earth.
A new student competition will start within a few months.