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After seven successful years on the International Space Station, 250 vertical miles above our planet, the original two Astro Pi computers that we sent to the ISS to help young people run their code in space have been returned to Earth.
From today, one of these Astro Pi computers will be displayed in the Science Museum, London. You can visit it in the new Engineers Gallery, which is dedicated to world-changing engineering innovations and the diverse and fascinating range of people behind them.
The original Astro Pis, nicknamed Izzy and Ed, have played a major part in feeding tens of thousands of young people’s understanding and passion for science, mathematics, engineering, computing, and coding. In their seven years on the International Space Station (ISS), Izzy and Ed had the job of running over 70,000 programs created by young people as part of the annual Astro Pi Challenge.
Nicki Ashworth, 21, took part in the first-ever Astro Pi challenge after hearing about the opportunity at a science fair: “I thought it sounded like an interesting project, and good practice for my programming skills. I was young and had no idea of the extent of the project and how much it would influence my future.”
Like many young people who have participated in the Astro Pi Challenge, Nicki credits the Astro Pi Challenge as an inspiration to learn more about space and programming, and to decide on a career path: “My experience with Astro Pi definitely helped to shape my future choices. I’m currently in my third year of a Mechanical Engineering degree at University of Southampton, specialising in Computational Engineering and Design. I’ve always loved programming, which is why I took part in the Astro Pi competition, but it led to a fascination with space. This encouraged me to look at engineering as a future, and led me to where I am today!”
It all started in 2014, when we started collaborating with organisations including the UK Space Agency and European Space Agency (ESA) to fly two Astro Pi computers to the ISS for educational activities during the six-month Principia mission of British ESA astronaut Tim Peake.
The Astro Pi computers each consist of a Raspberry Pi computer integrated with a digital camera and an add-on board filled with environmental sensors, all enclosed in a protective aluminium flight case.
Commander Tim Peake, Britain’s first visitor to the ISS, accompanied the two first Astro Pi computers on the ISS. He used them to run experiments imagined, designed, and coded by school-age young people across the UK.
We held a competition in UK schools and coding clubs to invite young people to create experiments that could be run on the Astro Pis. Students conceived experiments and coded them in Python; we tested their Python programs and eventually picked seven to run on Izzy and Ed on the ISS.
The students’ experiments ranged from a simple but beautiful program to display the flag of the country over which the ISS was flying at a given time, to a reaction-time test for Tim Peake to measure his changing abilities across the six-month mission. The measurements from all the experiments were downloaded to Earth and analysed by the students.
“I still feel incredibly honoured to have competed in the very first [Astro Pi Challenge],” says Aaron Chamberlain, 18, who was 11 years old when he took part in the first-ever Astro Pi Challenge in 2015. “The experience was incredible and really cemented my enthusiasm for all things computing and coding. Finally looking at the photos the Raspberry Pi had taken of the astronauts floating 400 km above us was a feeling of awe that I will never forget.”
The next year, 2016, we expanded our partnership with ESA Education to be able to open up Astro Pi to young people across ESA Member states. The European Astro Pi Challenge has been going from strength to strength each year since, inspiring young people and adult mentors alike.
In 2021 we decided it was time to retire Izzy and Ed and replace them with upgraded Astro Pi computers with plenty of new and improved hardware, including a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B with 8 GB RAM.
Dave Honess, STEM Didactics Expert at the European Space Agency, was engineering lead at the Foundation for the first Astro Pi Challenge, and the return of the original hardware is a special event and moment of reflection for him: “It was a strange experience to open the box and hold the original Astro Pis again after all that time and distance they have travelled — literally billions of miles. Even though their mission is over, we will continue to learn from them with a tear-down analysis to find out if they have been affected by their time in space. Since Principia, I have watched the European Astro Pi Challenge grow with pride year on year, but I still feel very fortunate to have been there at the beginning.”
Thanks to the upgraded hardware, we are able to continue to grow the Astro Pi Challenge in collaboration with ESA Education. And each year it’s so exciting to see the creative and ingenious programs tens of thousands of young people from across Europe send us; 24,850 young people took part in the Challenge in the 2022/2023 cycle.
But how have Astro Pis Izzy and Ed fared in space over these seven years? Jonathan Bell, Principal Software Engineer at Raspberry Pi Limited, had a chance to find out first-hand: “I was lucky enough to have a look inside the returned Astro Pis. I was looking for the cosmetic effects of the unit being on the ISS for so long. On the inside they still look as pristine as when I assembled them! Barely a speck of dust on the internal boards, nor any signs that the external interface ports were worn from their years of use. A few dings and scrapes on the anodised exterior were all that I could see — and a missing joystick cap (as it turns out, hot-melt glue isn’t a permanent adhesive…). It was great to see that they still worked! It made me feel proud for what the team and the Astro Pi programme has achieved over the years. It’s good to have Izzy and Ed back!”
The new Engineers Gallery in the Science Museum opens today and is free to visit. Astro Pi computer Izzy is among the amazing exhibits. Learn more at sciencemuseum.org.uk/engineers.
To find out more about the Astro Pi Challenge and how to get involved with your kids at home, your school, or your STEM or coding club, visit astro-pi.org.
The next round of the Challenge starts in September — sign up for news to be the first to hear when we launch it.
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In the Columbus module of the International Space Station (ISS), there are two Astro Pi computers called Marie Curie and Nikola Tesla. These computers run the programs young people create as part of the annual European Astro Pi Challenge.
For this year’s Astro Pi Mission Zero, young people sent us over 15000 programs to show the ISS astronauts colourful images and animations of animals and plants on the Astro Pi displays and remind them of home.
Mission Zero is a free beginners’ coding activity. It gives young people the unique opportunity to follow our step-by-step guide to write a simple program in Python that can run in space on the ISS orbiting planet Earth.
The Mission Zero activity this year was to write code to use the Astro Pi’s colour sensor to measure the lighting conditions in the Columbus module, and to then use that measurement to set a colour in an image or animation on the Astro Pi’s 8×8 LED display. We invited young people to design images of fauna and flora to give the astronauts on board the ISS a reminder of the beautiful creatures, plantlife, and landscapes found on planet Earth.
The Mission Zero activity is ideal for learners trying text-based programming for the first time. It covers some key programming concepts, including variables, sequence, and iteration.
This year we received 15551 Mission Zero programs, and after carefully checking them against the entry and safety criteria, we were able to run 15475 programs. They were sent to us by 23605 learners working in teams or independently, and 10207 of this year’s participants were girls.
This year the most Mission Zero programs came from young people in the UK, followed by Spain, France, Italy, and Greece. Lots of different organisations supported young people to take part, including publicly funded primary and secondary schools, as well as educator- and volunteer-led Code Clubs and CoderDojos we support.
We’re celebrating the many different people involved in this year’s mission with a mosaic of the Mission Zero logo made up of lots of the inspiring designs participants sent us. You can explore an interactive version of the image too!
All of the participants whose programs ran on the ISS will be receiving a certificate to recognise their efforts, which will include the time and coordinates of the ISS when their program ran. Programs created by young people from across Europe ran on board the ISS in the final week of May.
If you enjoyed Astro Pi Mission Zero this year, we would be delighted to see you again in the next annual round. If you’re feeling inspired by the images young people have created, we invite you to get involved too. We provide guides and help for all adult mentors who want to support young people to take part, and the step-by-step guide for coding a Mission Zero program in 19 European languages.
The activity of designing an image has been really popular, and we have been super impressed with the creativity of young people’s designs. That’s why we’ll be running Mission Zero in the same format again starting in September.
If you’d like to hear news of the Astro Pi Challenge, please sign up to the newsletter on astro-pi.org:
We are always interested to hear your feedback about Mission Zero, as a mentor or participant. If you would like to share your thoughts with us, please email enquiries@astro-pi.org.
PS Look out for some cool news about the Astro Pi computers, which we’ll announce soon on this blog!
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Over 15,000 teams of young people from across Europe had their computer programs run on board the International Space Station (ISS) this month as part of this year’s European Astro Pi Challenge.
Astro Pi is run in collaboration by us and ESA Education, and offers two ways to get involved: Mission Zero and Mission Space Lab.
Mission Zero is the Astro Pi beginners’ activity. To take part, young people spend an hour writing a short Python program for the Astro Pi computers on the International Space Station (ISS). This year we invited them to create an 8×8 pixel image or animation on the theme of fauna and flora, which their program showed on an Astro Pi LED matrix display for 30 seconds.
This year, 23605 young people’s Mission Zero programs ran on the ISS. We need to check all the programs before we can send them to space and that means we got to see all the images and animations that the young people created. Their creativity was absolutely incredible! Here are some inspiring examples:
Mission Space Lab runs over eight months and empowers teams of young people to design real science experiments on the ISS, executed by Python programs they write themselves. Teams choose between two themes: ‘Life in space’ and ‘Life on Earth’.
This year, the Mission Space Lab programs of 1245 young people in 294 teams from 21 countries passed our rigorous judging and testing process. These programs were awarded flight status and sent to the Astro Pis on board the ISS, where they captured data for the teams to analyse back down on Earth.
Mission Space Lab teams this year decided to design experiments such as analysing cloud formations to identify where storms commonly occur, looking at ocean colour as a measure of depth, and analysing freshwater systems and the surrounding areas they supply water to.
Teams will be receiving their experiment data later this week, and will be analysing and interpreting it over the next few weeks. For example, the team analysing freshwater systems want to investigate how these systems may be affected by climate change. What their Mission Space Lab program has recorded while running on the Astro Pis is a unique data set that the team can compare against other scientific data.
For the ‘Life on Earth’ category of Mission Space Lab experiments this year, the Astro Pis were positioned in a different place to previous years: in the Window Observational Research Facility (WORF). Therefore the Astro Pis could take photos with a wider view. Combined with the High Quality Camera of the upgraded Astro Pi computers we sent to the ISS in 2021, this means that the teams got amazing-quality photos of the Earth’s surface.
Once the experiments for ‘Life on Earth’ were complete, the astronauts moved the Astro Pis back to the Columbus module and replaced their SD cards, ready for capturing the data for the ‘Life in Space’ experiments.
Running programs in an environment as unique as the ISS, where all hardware and software is put to the test, brings many complexities and challenges. Everything that happens on the ISS has to be scheduled well in advance, and astronauts have a strict itinerary to follow to keep the ISS running smoothly.
As usual, this year’s experiments met with their fair share of challenges. One initial challenge the Astro Pis had this year was that the Canadarm, a robotic arm on the outside of the ISS, was in operation during some of the ‘Life on Earth’ experiments. Although it’s fascinating to see part of the ISS in-shot, it also slightly obscured some of the photos.
Another challenge was that window shutters were scheduled to close during some of the experiments, which meant we had to switch around the schedule for Mission Space Lab programs to run so that all of the experiments aiming to capture photos could do so.
Well done to all the young people who’ve taken part in the European Astro Pi Challenge this year.
If you’d like to hear about upcoming Astro Pi Challenges, sign up to the newsletter at astro-pi.org.
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We are excited to share that 294 teams of young people participating in this year’s Astro Pi Mission Space Lab achieved Flight Status: their programs will run on the Astro Pis installed on the International Space Station (ISS) in April.
Mission Space Lab is part of the European Astro Pi Challenge, an ESA Education project run in collaboration with the Raspberry Pi Foundation. It offers young people the amazing opportunity to conduct scientific investigations in space, by writing computer programs that run on Raspberry Pi computers on board the International Space Station.
To take part in Mission Space Lab, young people form teams and choose between two themes for their experiments, investigating either ‘Life in space’ or ‘Life on Earth’. They send us their experiment ideas in Phase 1, and in Phase 2 they write Python programs to execute their experiments on the Astro Pis onboard the ISS. As we sent upgraded Astro Pis to space at the end of 2021, Mission Space Lab teams can now also choose to use a machine learning accelerator during their experiment time.
In total, 771 teams sent us ideas during Phase 1 in September 2022, so achieving Flight Status is a huge accomplishment for the successful teams. We are delighted that 391 teams submitted programs for their experiments. Teams who submitted had their programs checked for errors and their experiments tested, resulting in 294 teams being granted Flight Status. 134 of these teams included some aspects of machine learning in their experiments using the upgraded Astro Pis’ machine learning accelerator.
The 294 teams to whom we were able to award Flight Status this year represent 1245 young people. 34% of team members are female, and the average participant age is 15. The 294 successful teams hail from 21 countries; Italy has the most teams progressing to the next phase (48), closely followed by Spain (37), the UK (34), Greece (25), and the Czech Republic (25).
Teams can use the Astro Pis to investigate life inside ESA’s Columbus module of the ISS, by writing a program to detect things with at least one of the Astro Pi’s sensors. This can include for example the colour and intensity of light in the module, or the temperature and humidity.
81 teams that created ‘Life in space’ experiments have achieved Flight Status this year. Examples of experiments from this year are investigating how the Earth’s magnetic field is felt on the ISS, what environmental conditions the astronauts experience compared to those on Earth directly beneath the ISS as it orbits, or whether the cabin might be suitable for other lifeforms, such as plants or bacteria.
In the ‘Life on Earth’ theme, teams investigate features on the Earth’s surface using the cameras on the Astro Pis, which are positioned to view Earth from a window on the ISS.
This year the Astro Pis will be located in the Window Observational Research Facility (WORF), which is larger than the window the computers were positioned in in previous years. This means that teams running ‘Life on Earth’ experiments can capture better images. 206 teams that created experiments in the ‘Life on Earth’ theme have achieved Flight Status.
Thanks to the upgraded Astro Pi hardware, this is the second year that teams could decide whether to use visible-light or infrared (IR) photography. Teams running experiments using IR photography have chosen to examine topics such as plant health in different regions, the effects of deforestation, and desertification. Teams collecting visible light photography have chosen to design experiments analysing clouds in different regions, changes in ocean colour, the velocity of the ISS, and classification of biomes (e.g. desert, forest, grassland, wetland).
Each of this year’s 391 submissions has been through a number of tests to ensure they follow the challenge rules, meet the ISS security requirements, and can run without errors on the Astro Pis. Once the experiments have started, we can’t rely on astronaut intervention to resolve any issues, so we have to make sure that all of the programs will run without any problems.
This means that the start of the year is a very busy time for us. We run tests on Mission Space Lab teams’ programs on a number of exact replicas of the Astro Pis, including a final test to run every experiment that has passed all tests for the full three-hour experiment duration. The 294 experiments that received Flight Status will take over 5 weeks to run.
97 programs submitted by teams during Phase 2 of Mission Space Lab this year did not pass testing and so could not be awarded Flight Status. We wish we could run every experiment that is submitted, but there is only limited time available for the Astro Pis to be positioned in the ISS window. Therefore, we have to be extremely rigorous in our selection, and many of the 97 teams were not successful because of only small issues in their programs. We recognise how much work every Mission Space Lab team does, and all teams can be very proud of designing and creating an experiment.
Even if you weren’t successful this year, we hope you enjoyed participating and will take part again in next year’s challenge.
Once all of the experiments have run, we will send the teams the data collected during their experiments. Teams will then have time to analyse their data and write a short report to share their findings. Based on these reports, we will select winners of this year’s Mission Space Lab. The winning and highly commended teams will receive a special surprise.
Congratulations to all successful teams! We are really looking forward to seeing your results.
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This year’s International Women’s Day (IWD) focuses on innovation and technology for gender equality. This cause aligns closely with our mission as a charity: to enable young people to realise their full potential through the power of computing and digital technologies. An important part of our mission is to shift the gender balance in computing education.
As the UN Women’s announcement for IWD 2023 says: “Growing inequalities are becoming increasingly evident in the context of digital skills and access to technologies, with women being left behind as the result of this digital gender divide. The need for inclusive and transformative technology and digital education is therefore crucial for a sustainable future.”
According to the UN, women currently hold only 2 in every 10 science, engineering, and information and communication technology jobs globally. Women are a minority of university-level students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses, at only 35%, and in information and communication technology courses, at just 3%. This is especially concerning since the WEF predicts that by 2050, 75% of jobs will relate to STEM.
We see this situation reflected in England: computer science is the secondary school subject with the largest gender gap at A level, with girls accounting for only 15% of students. That’s why over the past three years, we have run a research programme to trial ways to encourage more young women to study Computer Science. The programme, Gender Balance in Computing, has produced useful insights for designing equitable computing education around the world.
The UN says that “across countries, girls are systematically steered away from science and math careers. Teachers and parents, intentionally or otherwise, perpetuate biases around areas of education and work best ‘suited’ for women and men.” There is strong evidence to suggest that the representation of women and girls in computing can be improved by introducing them to computing role models such as female computing students or women in tech careers.
Presenting role models was central to the Belonging trial in our Gender Balance in Computing programme. One arm of this trial used resources developed by WISE called My Skills My Life to explore the effect of introducing role models into computing lessons for primary school learners. The trial provided opportunities for learners to speak to women who work in technology. It also offered a quiz to help learners identify their strengths and characteristics and to match them with role models who were similar to them, which research shows is more effective for increasing learners’ confidence.
Teachers who used the resources reported learners’ increased understanding of the types and range of technology jobs, and a widening of learners’ career aspirations.
“Learning about computing makes me feel good because it helps me think more about what I want to be.” — Primary school learner in the Belonging trial
“When [the resources were] showing all of the females in the jobs, nobody went ‘Oh, I didn’t know that a female could do that’, but I think they were amazed by the role of jobs and the fact it was all females doing it.“ — Primary school teacher in the Belonging trial
When teachers and students enter a computing classroom, they bring with them diverse social identities that affect the dynamics of the classroom. Although these dynamics are often unspoken, they can become apparent in which students answer questions or succeed visibly in activities. Without intervention, a dominant group of confident speakers can emerge, and students who are not in this dominant group may lose confidence in their abilities. When teachers set collaborative learning activities that use defined roles or structured discussions, this gives a wider range of students the opportunity to speak up and participate.
Pair programming is one such activity that has been used in research studies to improve learner attitudes and confidence towards computing. In pair programming, one learner is the ‘driver’. They control the keyboard and mouse to write the code. The other learner is the ‘navigator’. They read out the instructions and monitor the code for errors. Learners swap roles regularly, so that both can participate equitably. The Pair Programming trial we conducted as part of Gender Balance in Computing explored the use of this teaching approach with students aged 8 to 11. Feedback from the teachers showed that learners found working in structured pairs engaging.
“Even those who are maybe a little bit more reluctant… those who put their hands up today and said they still prefer to work independently, they are still all engaging quite clearly in that with their pair and doing it really, really well. However much they say they prefer working independently, I think they clearly showed how much they enjoy it, engage with it. And you know they’re achieving with it — so we should be doing this.” – Primary school teacher in the Pair Programming trial
Another collaborative teaching approach is peer instruction. In lessons that use peer instruction, students work in small groups to discuss the answer to carefully constructed multiple choice questions. A whole-class discussion then follows. In the Peer Instruction trial with learners aged 12 to 13 in our Gender Balance in Computing programme, we found that this approach was welcomed by the learners, and that it changed which learners offered answers and ideas.
“I prefer talking in a group because then you get the other side of other people’s thoughts.” – Secondary school learner (female) in the Peer Instruction trial
“[…] you can have a bit of time to think for yourself then you can bounce ideas off other people.” – Secondary school learner (male) in the Peer Instruction trial
“I was very pleased that a lot of the girls were doing a lot of the talking.” – Secondary school teacher in the Peer Instruction trial
Our Gender Balance in Computing research programme showed that no single intervention we trialled significantly increased girls’ engagement in computing or their intention to study it further. Combining several of the approaches we tested may be more impactful. If you’re part of an educational setting where you’d like to adopt multiple approaches at the same time, you can freely access the materials associated with the research programme (see our blog posts about the trials for links).
The research programme also showed that age matters: across Gender Balance in Computing, we observed a big difference in intent to study Computing between primary school and secondary school learners (data from ages 8–11 and 12–13). Fewer secondary school learners reported intent to study the subject further, and while this difference was apparent for both girls and boys, it was more marked for girls.
This finding from England is mirrored by a study the UN Women’s Gender Snapshot 2022 refers to: “A 2020 study of Filipina girls demonstrated that loss of interest in STEM subjects started as early as age 10, when girls began perceiving STEM careers as male-dominated and believing that girls are naturally less adept in STEM subjects. The relative lack of female STEM role models reinforced such perceptions.” That’s why it’s necessary that all primary school learners — no matter what their gender is — have a successful start in the computing classroom, that they encounter role models they can relate to, and that they are supported to engage in computing and creating with technology by their parents, teachers, and communities.
The Foundation’s vision is that every young person develops the knowledge, skills, and confidence to use digital technologies effectively, and to be able to critically evaluate these technologies and confidently engage with technological change. While making changes inside the computing classroom will be beneficial for gender equality, this is just one aspect of building an equitable digital future. We all need to contribute to creating a world where innovation and technology support gender equity.
In all our work, we make sure gender equity is at the forefront, whether that’s in programmes we run for young people, in resources we create for schools, or in partnerships we have, such as with Pratham Education Foundation in India or Team4Tech and Kenya Connect in Wamunyu, Kenya. Computing education is a global challenge, and we are proud to be part of a community that is committed to making it equitable.
This IWD, we invite you to share your thoughts on what equitable computing education means to you, and what you think is needed to achieve it, whether that’s in your school or club, in your local community, or in your country.
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This year, 768 teams made up of 3086 young people from 23 countries sent us their ideas for experiments to run on board the International Space Station (ISS) for Astro Pi Mission Space Lab.
Mission Space Lab is part of the European Astro Pi Challenge, an ESA Education programme run in collaboration with us at the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Mission Space Lab teams can choose between ‘Life on Earth’ and ‘Life in space’ for their experiment idea. As in previous years, ‘Life on Earth’ was the most popular experiment theme: three quarters of the teams chose to submit an idea with this theme, for experiments using one of the Astro Pi’s High Quality Cameras. Half of these experiments involved using the near-infrared sensitive camera to investigate topics such as deforestation. Across both themes, over 40% of teams expressed an interest in using machine learning in their experiment.
A panel of 25 judges from the Raspberry Pi Foundation and ESA Education assessed the submitted ideas. We are restricted in how many teams we can accommodate, as time to run experiments on board the ISS is limited, especially for ‘Life on Earth’ experiments which need time in a nadir window. The standard of the submitted ideas was higher than ever, making this the toughest judging yet. We are delighted to announce that 486 teams will move on to Phase 2 of Mission Space Lab: writing the code for their experiments.
If your experiment idea was unsuccessful this time, we understand that this will be disappointing news for your team. We encourage them to submit a new experiment idea in next year’s Mission Space Lab. We will let you know when Mission Space Lab 23/24 will be launching.
All the teams whose experiment ideas we’ve selected will receive a special Astro Pi hardware kit, customised to their idea, to help them write and test the Python programs to execute their experiments. Once the teams of young people have received their kits, they can familiarise themselves with the Astro Pi hardware and then create and test (and re-test!) their programs.
The deadline for Mission Space Lab teams to submit the code for their experiments to us is Thursday 24 February 2023. Once their program code has been through our rigorous checks and tests, it will be ready to run on the Astro Pis on board the ISS during April/May 2023.
Congratulations to the successful teams, and thank you to everyone who sent us their ideas for Mission Space Lab this year. And a special thank you to all the teachers, educators, club volunteers, and other wonderful people who are acting as mentors for Mission Space Lab teams. You are helping your young people do something remarkable that they will remember for the rest of their lives, and the Astro Pi Challenge would not happen without you.
Every year since 2015, thanks to our annual Astro Pi Challenge, teams of young people have written computer programs to run scientific experiments on two Astro Pi computers on the ISS.
This is the second year that experiments will run on the Mark II Astro Pi computers, named after Nikola Tesla and Marie Curie, but lots of people have been wondering what would happen to their predecessors. After running over 50,000 young people’s computer programs, the Mark I Astro Pi computers, Ed and Izzy, have safely returned to Earth for a well-earned rest.
Astro Pi Mission Zero is a one-hour beginners’ programming activity. In Mission Zero, young people, in teams or as individuals, write a program to display an image or series of images of their own design on one of the Astro Pi computers, to remind the astronauts on the ISS of home.
In their Mission Zero programs, young people get to use a reading from the Astro Pi’s colour and luminosity sensor to set the colour of their image background. Young people up to age 19 from eligible countries can take part in Mission Zero 2022/23 until 17 March. Visit the Astro Pi website for more details.
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Our team here at the Raspberry Pi Foundation, in collaboration with ESA Education, is excited to announce the successful deployment of young people’s programs aboard the International Space Station (ISS) for the European Astro Pi Challenge 2020/21!
Across both Astro Pi missions — Mission Zero and Mission Space Lab — 14,993 participants created an amazing 9408 programs, which have now run aboard the ISS’s two special Raspberry Pi computers: the Astro Pis Izzy and Ed. Congratulations to all for their achievements during this challenging year!
This year, 14,054 young people from 24 countries successfully took part in Mission Zero: the Astro Pi computers aboard the ISS ran their programs for 30 seconds each.
In Mission Zero, young people write programs to measure the humidity inside the ISS Columbus module using the Sense HAT add-on of the Astro Pi, and then use the Sense HAT’s LED matrix to display the measurement together with their very own message to the astronauts. This year that included ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet, who oversaw the deployment of both the Mission Zero and Mission Space Lab programs.
To make it easier for young people to participate in Mission Zero while school closures and restrictions on face-to-face meetings were in place to help stop the spread of coronavirus, we updated the Mission Zero rules this year: for the first time, young people could take part by themselves as well as in teams. As we had hoped, this new option proved hugely popular, with 6308 entries coming from individual participants. Despite the challenging circumstances, this year’s number of Mission Zero participants was just 5% lower than last year’s — a sure sign of how much young people love Astro Pi!
In addition to the Mission Zero participants, 232 teams of in total 939 students and young people are currently in their final phase of Astro Pi Mission Space Lab. Over the last month, each team had the program for their scientific experiment run on either Astro Pi Ed or Astro Pi Izzy for three hours each.
Teams conducting ‘Life on Earth’ experiments used Astro Pi Izzy’s near-infrared camera to capture images of the planet’s surface. Their experiments include predicting weather patterns by analysing cloud formations, assessing the impact of climate change by investigating reductions in vegetation cover over time using NDVI, and studying variations in the Earth’s magnetic field.
Teams conducting ‘Life in space’ experiments used Astro Pi Ed’s sensors to investigate life inside the ISS Columbus module. Their experiments include measuring the direction and force of gravity inside the Space Station, analysing the air quality onboard, and calculating the position and direction of the Space Station in orbit.
All Mission Space Lab teams have now received their data back from the ISS so they can analyse it and summarise their findings in their final scientific reports. To grant teams enough time to complete their reports while social distancing measures may be in place, we have extended the submission deadline to 12 pm (noon) BST on Monday 28 June 2021!
Despite its relatively large size of 109 metres, the ISS only has enough sleeping pods for seven astronauts. However, sometimes there can be more than seven astronauts onboard: usually when one group prepares to leave as another arrives. Recently, a whole eleven astronauts were aboard the ISS, which meant that they had to get creative about where to settle down for sleep.
For Ed and Izzy, our Astro Pi computers, a large crowd such as this can cause some complications! For one thing, ‘crew bumping’ is more likely, which is when the USB cable connecting an Astro Pi to power can become accidentally unplugged because an astronaut collides with it in the small space of the Columbus module. And this time, the snug sleeping situation made one of the crew members request permission to cover Astro Pi Ed’s LED display during the ‘night’! Why? The astronaut was ‘bedding down’ directly opposite Ed, and the light from the display was making sleep difficult! That just goes to show that, even in space, it’s really best to avoid bright light if you need a good night’s sleep.
We and our collaborators at ESA Education have appointed a jury of experts to judge all the Mission Space Lab Phase 4 final reports and select the 10 teams with the best reports as the winners of the 2020/21 round of Mission Space Lab. Each of the 10 winning teams will receive a special prize: an invitation to a webinar with an ESA astronaut where they can directly ask them their questions about life in space!
Congratulations again to all the teams that have taken part in the European Astro Pi Challenge this year. Mission Space Lab teams, we can’t wait to read your reports!
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Quite possibly the coolest thing we saw Raspberry Pi powering last year was ISS Mimic, a mini version of the International Space Station (ISS). We wanted to learn more about the brains that dreamt up ISS Mimic, which uses data from the ISS to mirror exactly what the real thing is doing in orbit.
The ISS Mimic team’s a diverse, fun-looking bunch of people and they all made their way to NASA via different paths. Maybe you could see yourself there in the future too?
Dallas Kidd currently works at the startup Skylark Wireless, helping to advance the technology to provide affordable high speed internet to rural areas.
Previously, she worked on traffic controllers and sensors, in finance on a live trading platform, on RAID controllers for enterprise storage, and at a startup tackling the problem of alarm fatigue in hospitals.
Before getting her Master’s in computer science with a thesis on automatically classifying stars, she taught English as a second language, Algebra I, geometry, special education, reading, and more.
Her hobbies are scuba diving, learning about astronomy, creative writing, art, and gaming.
Tristan Moody currently works as a spacecraft survivability engineer at Boeing, helping to keep the ISS and other satellites safe from the threat posed by meteoroids and orbital debris.
He has a PhD in mechanical engineering and currently spends much of his free time as playground equipment for his two young kids.
Estefannie is a software engineer, designer, punk rocker and likes to overly engineer things and document her findings on her YouTube and Instagram channels as Estefannie Explains It All.
Estefannie spends her time inventing things before thinking, soldering for fun, writing, filming and producing content for her YouTube channel, and public speaking at universities, conferences, and hackathons.
She lives in Houston, Texas and likes tacos.
Douglas Kimble currently works as an electrical/mechanical design engineer at Boeing. He has designed countless wire harness and installation drawings for the ISS.
He assumes the mentor role and interacts well with diverse personalities. He is also the world’s biggest Lakers fan living in Texas.
His favorite pastimes includes hanging out with his two dogs, Boomer and Teddy.
Craig’s father worked for the Space Shuttle program, designing the ascent flight trajectories profiles for the early missions. He remembers being on site at Johnson Space Center one evening, in a freezing cold computer terminal room, punching cards for a program his dad wrote in the early 1980s.
Craig grew up with LEGO and majored in Architecture and Space Design at the University of Houston’s Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA).
His day job involves measuring ISS major assemblies on the ground to ensure they’ll fit together on-orbit. Traveling to many countries to measure hardware that will never see each other until on-orbit is the really coolest part of the job.
Sam Treadgold is an aerospace engineer who also works on the Meteoroid and Orbital Debris team, helping to protect the ISS and Space Launch System from hypervelocity impacts. Occasionally they take spaceflight hardware out to the desert and shoot it with a giant gun to see what happens.
In a non-pandemic world he enjoys rock climbing, music festivals, and making sound-reactive LED sunglasses.
Chen Deng is a Systems Engineer working at Boeing with the International Space Station (ISS) program. Her job is to ensure readiness of Payloads, or science experiments, to launch in various spacecraft and operations to conduct research aboard the ISS.
The ISS provides a very unique science laboratory environment, something we can’t get much of on earth: microgravity! The term microgravity means a state of little or very weak gravity. The virtual absence of gravity allows scientists to conduct experiments that are impossible to perform on earth, where gravity affects everything that we do.
In her free time, Chen enjoys hiking, board games, and creative projects alike.
Bryan Murphy is a dynamics and motion control engineer at Boeing, where he gets to create digital physics models of robotic space mechanisms to predict their performance.
His favorite projects include the ISS treadmill vibration isolation system and the shiny new docking system. He grew up on a small farm where his hands-on time with mechanical devices fueled his interest in engineering.
When not at work, he loves to brainstorm and create with his artist/engineer wife and their nerdy kids, or go on long family roadtrips—- especially to hike and kayak or eat ice cream. He’s also vice president of a local makerspace, where he leads STEM outreach and includes excess LEDs in all his builds.
Susan is a mechanical engineer and a 30+-year veteran of manned spaceflight operations. She has worked the Space Shuttle Program for Payloads (middeck experiments and payloads deployed with the shuttle arm) starting with STS-30 and was on the team that deployed the Hubble Space Telescope.
She then transitioned into life sciences experiments, which led to the NASA Mir Program where she was on continuous rotation for three years to Russian Mission Control, supporting the NASA astronaut and science experiments onboard the space station as a predecessor to the ISS.
She currently works on the ISS Program (for over 20 years now), where she used to write procedures for on-orbit assembly of the Space Xtation and now writes installation procedures for on-orbit modifications like the docking adapter. She is also an artist and makes crosses out of found objects, and even used to play professional women’s football.
You can keep up with Team ISS Mimic on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. For more info or to join the team, check out their GitHub page and Discord.
Did you know that there are Raspberry Pi computers aboard the real ISS that young people can run their own Python programs on? How cool is that?!
Find out how to participate at astro-pi.org.
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Did you see the coolest International Space Station (ISS) on Earth on the blog last week? ISS Mimic is powered by Raspberry Pi, mirrors exactly what the real ISS is doing in orbit, and was built by NASA engineers to make the ISS feel more real for Earth-bound STEAM enthusiasts.
The team launched ISS Mimic in celebration of 20 years of continuous human presence in space on the ISS. And they’ve been getting lots of questions since we posted about their creation so, we asked them back to fill you in with a quick Q&A.
Yes, we forced one: “Mechatronic Instantiated Model, Interactively Controlled”
“The second-most complicated International Space Station ever made”. We also like “1/100th scale for 1/100,000,000th cost”
No, it’s a volunteer project, but we do get lots of support. It’s done on our own time and money — though many NASA types and others have kicked in to help buy materials.
Yes — mostly other organisations that we have teamed up with. We partner with a non-profit makerspace near NASA, Creatorspace, for tools, materials, and outreach. And an awesome local 3D printer manufacturer, re:3D, has joined us and printed our (large) solar panels for free, and is helping to refine our models. They are also working towards making a kit of parts for sale for those who don’t have a printer or the time to print all the pieces, with a discount for educators.
Particularly helpful has been Space Center Houston (NASA’s visitor center), who invited us to present to the public and at an educator conference (pre-COVID), and allowed us to spend a full day filming in their beautiful facility. Our earliest supporter was Boeing, who we‘ve worked with to facilitate outreach to educators and students from the start.
5 years — a looong time. We spent much effort early on to establish the scale and feasibility and test the capabilities of 3D printing. We maintained a hard push to keep the materials cost down and reduce build time/complexity for busy educators. We always knew we’d use Raspberry Pi for the brain, but were looking for less costly options for the mechatronics. We’d still like to cut the cost down a lot to make the project more attainable for lower-income schools and individuals.
All of the support has allowed us to take our prototype to schools and STEM events locally. But we really want this to be built around the world to reach those who don’t have much connection to space exploration and hands-on STEM. The big build is probably most suitable for teens and adults, while the alternative builds (in-work) would be much more approachable for younger students.
No, not at all. Our focus is to make it viable for schools/educators — in cost and build complexity — but we want any space nerd to be able to build their own and help drive the design.
Gravity. And time to work on the project… and trying to keep the cost down.
It’s on our radar! Another build that’s screaming to be made is hacking the LEGO ISS model (released this year) to rotate its joints and light LEDs.
You can always drop your thoughts right here [in the comments section below] or join the design effort on Discord and GitHub. And there’s always the socials: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.
There are two Raspberry Pi computers aboard the real ISS right now! And even better, young people have the chance to write Python code that will run on them — IN SPACE — as part of the European Astro Pi Challenge.
Tell the young space enthusiast in your life about Astro Pi to inspire them to try coding! All the info lives at astro-pi.org.
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A group of us NASA engineers work on the International Space Station (ISS) for our day-jobs but craved something more tangible than computer models and data curves to share with the world. So, in our free time, we built ISS Mimic. It’s still in the works, but we are publishing now to celebrate 20 years of continuous human presence in space on the ISS.
This video was filmed and produced by our friend, new teammate, and Raspberry Pi regular Estefannie of Estefannie Explains it All. Most of the images in this blog are screen grabbed from her wonderful video too.
ISS Mimic is a 1% scale model of the International Space Station, bringing the American football field-sized beauty down to a tabletop-sized build. Most elements in the final version of the build which you see in the video are 3D printed — recently even the solar arrays. It has 12 motors: 10 to control the solar panels and two to turn the thermal radiators. All of these are fed by live data streaming from the ISS, so what you see on ISS Mimic is what’s happening that very moment on the real deal up in space.
Despite the global ISS effort, most people seem to feel disconnected from space exploration and all the STEAM goodness within. Beyond headlines and rocket launches, even space enthusiasts may feel out of touch. Most of what is available is via apps and videos, which are great, but miss the physical aspect.
ISS Mimic is intended to provide an earthbound, tangible connection to that so-close-but-so-far-away orbiting science platform. We want space excitement to fuel STEAM interest.
As you may have guessed, a Raspberry Pi is the brain of the business. Raspberry Pi taps into NASA’s public ISS live data stream to parse the telemetry into the bits we want. There’s JavaScript and tons of Python, including Kivy for the graphics.
Users toggle through various touchscreen data displays of things like battery charge states, electrical power generated, joint angles, communication dish status, gyroscope torques, and even airlock air pressure — fun to watch prior to a spacewalk!
The user can also touchscreen-activate the physical model, in which case Raspberry Pi sends the telemetry along to Arduinos, which in turn command motors in the model to do their thing, rotating the solar panels and thermal radiators to the proper angle. The solar panel joints use compact geared DC motors with Hall-effect sensors for feedback. The sensor signals are sent back down to the Arduino, which keeps track of the position of each joint compared to ISS telemetry, and updates motor command accordingly to stay in sync.
The thermal radiator motors are simpler. Since they only rotate about 180° total, a simple RC micro servo is utilised with the desired position sent from an Arduino directly from the Raspberry Pi data stream.
When MIMIC is in ‘live mode’, the motor commands are the exact data stream coming from ISS. This is a fun mode to leave it in for long durations when it’s in the corner of the room. But it changes slowly, so we also include advanced playback, where prior orbit data stored on Raspberry Pi is played back at 60× speed. A regular 90-minute orbit profile can be played back in 90 seconds.
We also have ‘disco mode’, which may have been birthed during lack of sleep, but now we plan to utilise it whenever we want to grab attention — such as to alert users that the ISS is flying overhead.
We may have a mild LED addiction, and we have LEDs embedded where the ISS batteries would live at the base of the solar arrays. They change colour with the charge voltage, so we can tell by watching them when the ISS is going into Earth’s shadow, or when the batteries are fully charged, etc.
A few times when we were working on the model and the LEDs suddenly changed, we thought we had bumped something. But it turned out the first array was edging behind Earth. These are fun to watch during spacewalks, and the model gives us advanced notice that the crew is about to be in darkness.
We plan to cram more LEDs in to react to other data. The project is open source, so anyone can build one and improve the design — help wanted! After all, the ISS itself is a worldwide collaboration with 19 countries participating by providing components and crew.
The solar panels on the ISS are mounted on what’s known as the ‘outboard truss’ — one each on the Port and Starboard ends of ISS. Everything on the outboard truss rotates together as part of the sun-tracking (in addition to each solar array rotating individually). So, you can’t just run the power/signal wires through the interface or they would twist and break. ISS Mimic has the same issue.
Even though our solar panels don’t generate power, their motors still require power and signals. The ISS has a specialised, unique build; but fortunately we were able to solve our problem with a simple slip ring design sourced from Amazon.
Wire management turned out to be a big issue for us. We had bird nests in several places early on (still present on the Port side solar), so we created some custom PCBs just for wire management, to keep the chaos down. We incorporated HDMI connectors and cables in some places to provide nice shielding and convenient sized coupling — actually a bit more compact than the Ethernet we’d used before.
Also, those solar panels are huge, and the mechanism that supports the outboard truss (everything on the sides that rotate together) on the ISS includes a massive 10 foot diameter bull gear called the Solar Alpha Rotary Joint. A pinion gear from a motor interfaces with this gear to turn it as needed.
We were pleasantly surprised that our 3D-printed bull gear held up quite well with a similar pinion-driven design. Overall, our 3D prints have survived better than expected. We are revamping most models to include more detail, and we could certainly use help here.
Our sights are set firmly on educators as our primary area of focus, and we’ve been excited to partner with Space Center Houston to speak at public events and a space exploration educator conference with international attendance earlier this year.
The feedback has been encouraging and enlightening. We want to keep getting feedback from educators, so please provide more insights by either commenting on this blog or via the contact info listed at the bottom.
A highlight for the team was when the ISS Mimic prototype was requested to live for a month in NASA’s Mission Control Center and was synced to live data during an historic spacewalk. Mimic experienced an ‘anomaly’ when a loose wire caused one of the solar panel motors to spin at 100× the normal rate.
You’ll be happy to know that none of the engineering professionals were fooled into thinking the real ISS was doing time-trials. Did I mention it’s still a work in progress? You can’t be scared of failure (for non-critical applications!), particularly when developing something brand-new. It’s part of shaking out problems and learning.
It’s an exciting time in human and robotic spaceflight, with lots of budding projects and new organisations joining the effort. This feels like a great time to deepen our connection to this great progress, and we hope ISS Mimic can help us to do that, as well as encourage more students to play in coding, mechatronics, and STEAM.
You can keep up with Team ISS Mimic on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. For more info or to join the team, check out our GitHub page and Discord.
One of the best parts of this project has been teaming up with organisations to share the love. We partner with a non-profit makerspace near NASA called Creatorspace, for tools, materials, and outreach. And an awesome local 3D printer manufacturer, re:3D, has joined us to print some of our larger components for free and is helping to refine our models. Space Center Houston (NASA’s visitor centre) invited us to present to public and educator events, and generously allowed us to spend a full day filming in their beautiful facility. Our earliest supporter was Boeing, who we’ve worked with to facilitate outreach to educators and students from the start. And of course we are thankful to NASA for providing the public data stream that makes the project possible.
Did you know that there are Raspberry Pi computers aboard the real ISS that young people can run their own Python programs on? Find out more at astro-pi.org.
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What could be the world’s first interactive art experiment in space is powered by Raspberry Pi!
The experiment, named Pulse/Hydra 3, features a kaleidoscope (as seen in the video) that lights up and starts to rotate after it receives heartbeat data from its ground terminal. This artistic experiment is designed to inspire people back on Earth.
Look closely at the video and you should be able to see small beads floating around in microgravity.
During scheduled events at museum and galleries, participants use a specially designed terminal fitted with a pulse oximeter to measure their pulse rate and blood oxygenation level. These measurements are transmitted in real time to the Pulse/Hydra 3 payload on the ISS, which is activated by the transmission.
Inside the payload, there’s a specially designed ‘microgravity kaleidoscope’. The transmitted data activates the kaleidoscope, and the resulting live images are securely streamed back to the ground terminal. The images are then projected onto large video screens so the whole audience can watch what is happening in orbit. The artistic idea is that both pulse rate and blood oxygenation levels are highly transient physiological characteristics that respond rapidly to conscious and sub-conscious emotional states. Therefore, there is a complex interaction between the participant and the payload, as both react to each other during the experience.
We wouldn’t have been able to achieve things like that on dial-up internet.
Pulse/Hydra 3 is currently installed aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in the ESA Columbus module. The Columbus laboratory is ESA’s biggest single contribution to the ISS. The 4.5 m diameter cylindrical module of 6.9 m in length is equipped with flexible research facilities and provides accommodation for experiments in the field of multidisciplinary research into material science, fluid physics, and life science.
Artist’s cut-away view of the Columbus module elements (image credit: ESA)
This payload was launched on 29 June 2018 and it will be completing its two years in orbit soon.
Pulse/Hydra 3 is, you guessed it, the third in a series of experiments run on board the Columbus module. The other two are:
And Hydra-3 is the interactive art payload you’ve just read about. It lives in the same rack that used to house Hydra-1 and -2. All three run on Raspberry Pi!
Hydra-1, Hydra-2, and Hydra-3, all running on Raspberry Pi
These three payloads are of course great companions to our Astro Pi computers, which allow thousands of young people every year to run their code in space!
Place your bets on the year the first Raspberry Pi shop opens on the Moon…
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This is your periodic reminder that there are two Raspberry Pi computers in space! That’s right — our Astro Pi units Ed and Izzy have called the International Space Station home since 2016, and we are proud to work with ESA Education to run the European Astro Pi Challenge, which allows students to conduct scientific investigations in space, by writing computer programs.
An Astro Pi takes photos of the earth from the window of the International Space Station
The Challenge has two missions: Mission Zero and Mission Space Lab. The more advanced one, Mission Space Lab, invites teams of students and young people under 19 years of age to enter by submitting an idea for a scientific experiment to be run on the Astro Pi units.
ESA and the Raspberry Pi Foundation would like to congratulate all the teams that participated in the European Astro Pi Challenge this year. A record-breaking number of more than 15000 people, from all 22 ESA Member States as well as Canada, Slovenia, and Malta, took part in this year’s challenge across both Mission Space Lab and Mission Zero!
After designing their own scientific investigations and having their programs run aboard the International Space Station, the Mission Space Lab teams spent their time analysing the data they received back from the ISS. To complete the challenge, they had to write a short scientific report discussing their results and highlighting the conclusions of their experiments. We were very impressed by the quality of the reports, which showed a high level of scientific merit.
We are delighted to announce that, while it was a difficult task, the Astro Pi jury has now selected eleven winning teams, as well as highly commending four additional teams. The eleven winning teams won the chance to join an exclusive video call with ESA astronaut Frank De Winne. He is the head of the European Astronaut Centre in Germany, where astronauts train for their missions. Each team had the once-in-a-lifetime chance to ask Frank about his life as an astronaut.
Firewatchers from Post CERN HSSIP Group, Portugal, used a machine learning method on their images to identify areas that had recently suffered from wildfires.
Go, 3.141592…, Go! from IES Tomás Navarro Tomás, Spain, took pictures of the Yosemite and Lost River forests and analysed them to study the effects of global drought stress. They did this by using indexes of vegetation and moisture to assess whether forests are healthy and well-preserved.
Les Robotiseurs from Ecole Primaire Publique de Saint-André d’Embrun, France, investigated variations in Earth’s magnetic field between the North and South hemispheres, and between day and night.
TheHappy.Pi from I Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. Bolesława Krzywoustego w Słupsku, Poland, successfully processed their images to measure the relative chlorophyll concentrations of vegetation on Earth.
AstroRussell from Liceo Bertrand Russell, Italy, developed a clever image processing algorithm to classify images into sea, cloud, ice, and land categories.
Les Puissants 2.0 from Lycee International de Londres Winston Churchill, United Kingdom, used the Astro Pi’s accelerometer to study the motion of the ISS itself under conditions of normal flight and course correction/reboost maneuvers.
Torricelli from ITIS “E.Torricelli”, Italy, recorded images and took sensor measurements to calculate the orbital period and flight speed of the ISS followed by the mass of the Earth using Newton’s universal law of gravitation.
ApplePi from I Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. Króla Stanisława Leszczyńskiego w Jaśle, Poland, compared their images from Astro Pi Izzy to historical images from 35 years ago and could show that coastlines have changed slightly due to erosion or human impact.
Spacethon from Saint Joseph La Salle Pruillé Le Chétif, France, tested their image-processing algorithm to identify solid, liquid, and gaseous features of exoplanets.
Stithians Rocket Code Club from Stithians CP School, United Kingdom, performed an experiment comparing the temperature aboard the ISS to the average temperature of the nearest country the space station was flying over.
Vytina Aerospace from Primary School of Vytina, Greece, recorded images of reservoirs and lakes on Earth to compare them with historical images from the last 30 years in order to investigate climate change.
We also selected four teams to be highly commended, and they will receive a selection of goodies from ESA Education and the Raspberry Pi Foundation:
Aguere Team from IES Marina Cebrián, Spain, investigated variations in the Earth’s magnetic field due to solar activity and a particular disturbance due to a solar coronal hole.
Astroraga from CoderDojo Trento, Italy, measured the magnetic field to investigate whether astronauts can still use a compass, just like on Earth, to orient themselves on the ISS.
Betlemites from Escoles Betlem, Spain, recorded the temperature on the ISS to find out if the pattern of a convection cell is different in microgravity.
Rovel In The Space from Scuola secondaria I grado A.Rosmini ROVELLO PORRO(Como), Italy, executed a program that monitored the pressure and would warn astronauts in case space debris or micrometeoroids collided with the ISS.
ESA and the Raspberry Pi Foundation would like to invite all school teachers, students, and young people to join the next edition of the challenge. Make sure to follow updates on the Astro Pi website and Astro Pi Twitter account to look out for the announcement of next year’s Astro Pi Challenge!
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So this happened. And we are buzzing!
You’re most likely aware of the Astro Pi Challenge. In case you’re not, it’s a wonderfully exciting programme organised by the European Space Agency (ESA) and us at Raspberry Pi. Astro Pi challenges European young people to write scientific experiments in code, and the best experiments run aboard the International Space Station (ISS) on two Astro Pi units: Raspberry Pi 1 B+ and Sense HATs encased in flight-grade aluminium spacesuits.
It’s very cool. So, so cool. As adults, we’re all extremely jealous that we’re unable to take part. We all love space and, to be honest, we all want to be astronauts. Astronauts are the coolest.
So imagine our excitement at Pi Towers when ESA shared this photo on Friday:
This is a Soyuz vehicle on its way to dock with the International Space Station. And while Soyuz vehicles ferry between earth and the ISS all the time, what’s so special about this occasion is that this very photo was captured using a Raspberry Pi 1 B+ and a Raspberry Pi Camera Module, together known as Izzy, one of the Astro Pi units!
So if anyone ever asks you whether the Raspberry Pi Camera Module is any good, just show them this photo. We don’t think you’ll need to provide any further evidence after that.
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In this year’s round of Astro Pi Mission Space Lab, 135 teams will run their experiments on the ISS!
CSA Astronaut David Saint-Jacques congratulates all the participants on behalf of ESA and the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
CSA astronaut David Saint-Jacques aboard the International Space Station – ENGLISH
CSA astronaut David Saint-Jacques introduces Phase Three of the Raspberry Pi ESA Astro Pi Challenge aboard the International Space Station. Pretty cool, right?
(Find the French version of the video at the bottom of this blog post.)
In September of last year, the European Space Agency and Raspberry Pi Foundation launched the European Astro Pi Challenge for 2018/2019.
It offers students and young people the amazing opportunity to conduct scientific investigations in space, by writing computer programs that run on Raspberry Pi computers aboard the International Space Station.
The Challenge offers two missions: Mission Zero and Mission Space Lab.
Mission Space Lab, our more advanced mission, invited teams of students and young people under 19 years of age to take part in Mission Space Lab by submitting an idea for a scientific experiment to be run on the Astro Pi units.
Teams were able to choose between two themes for their experiments: Life in space and Life on Earth. Teams that chose the ‘Life on Earth’ theme were tasked with using the Astro Pi computer Izzy, fitted with a near-infrared camera facing out of an ISS window, to study the Earth. For ‘Life in space’, teams used the Astro Pi computer Ed, which is equipped with a camera for light sensing, and investigate life inside the Columbus module of the ISS.
There are four phases to Mission Space Lab:
During Phase 1, the Astro Pi team received a record-breaking 471 entries from 24 countries! 381 teams were selected to progress to Phase 2 and had the chance to write computer programs for the scientific experiments they wanted to send to the Astro Pi computers aboard the International Space Station
After a long process of testing and judging experiments, the European Space Agency and Raspberry Pi Foundation are happy to announce that a record number of 135 teams have been granted ‘flight status’ for Phase 3 of the challenge!
53 teams with ‘Life in space’ entries and 82 teams with ‘Life on Earth’ entries have qualified for ‘Phase 3 — Deploy’ and ‘Phase 4 — Analyse’ of the European Astro Pi Challenge. The teams’ experiments were selected based on their experiment quality, their code quality, and the feasibility of their experiment idea. The selected programs have been tested on ground to ensure they will run without error on board the ISS.
The teams will receive their data back after their programs have been deployed on the International Space Station. They will then be tasked with writing a short report about their findings for the Astro Pi team. We will select the 10 best reports as the winners, and those lucky teams will be awarded a special prize!
The selected programs will run in the coming days on the ISS, overseen by CSA Astronaut David Saint-Jacques himself!
L’astronaute David Saint-Jacques de l’ASC à bord de la Station spatiale internationale – FRENCH
L’astronaute David Saint-Jacques de l’ASC présente la troisième phase du défi “Raspberry Pi ESA Astro Pi” à bord de la Station spatiale internationale Watch in English: Subscribe to our YouTube channel: http://rpf.io/ytsub Help us reach a wider audience by translating our video content: http://rpf.io/yttranslate Buy a Raspberry Pi from one
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The Raspberry Pi Foundation’s mission is to bring computing and digital making to everyone. Tackling the persistent gender imbalance in technology is a crucial part of this undertaking. As part of our work to increase the number of girls choosing to learn how to create with technology, we are marking International Women’s Day with a celebration of real role models.
Real role models for International Women’s Day 2019
Maria Quevedo, Managing Director, Code Club & Raspberry Pi Foundation, talks about the importance of real role models who show girls and women that computing
There is strong evidence to indicate that the presence of role models is a very effective way to inspire women and minorities to become interested in subjects and industries where they are underrepresented. Research suggests that the imbalance among the role models that girls and women are exposed to in their everyday lives contributes significantly to the persistently low number of girls pursuing science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects at school, and ultimately impacts their career choices.
In order to understand the extent of this imbalance, we carried out an analysis to explore the visibility of female technology role models in the UK media.
One of our most striking findings was that in the twelve months since International Women’s Day 2018, each of the women competing in UK television’s Love Island 2018 was written about in the UK media on average seven times more often than 50 of the UK’s top female technology role models. And popular UK men’s lifestyle magazines were twice as likely to write about top female technology leaders than magazines aimed at women.
We also looked at the subject matter covered by popular women’s and men’s magazines in the UK. We found that fashion (37% of all articles) and beauty (26%) were the most popular topics in women’s lifestyle media, while politics (5%) and careers (4%) were some of the least popular. The contrast with men’s lifestyle media was very pronounced. There, topic coverage was much more evenly distributed: fashion (21%) and politics (16%) came top, with grooming (12%) and careers (12%) close behind.
In other words, in the women’s lifestyle magazines, about 14 articles are written about fashion and beauty for every one about careers. Men’s lifestyle magazines, meanwhile, publish one careers piece for every three fashion and grooming articles.
It’s alarming to see such a dramatic imbalance in visibility for female technology leaders, and such stark differences between the focus of women’s and men’s media. We work hard to make sure our activities such as Code Club and CoderDojo are equally welcoming to girls and boys, and we’re proud that 45% of the volunteers and educators who run these clubs are women. However, role models in wider society are just as important in shaping the values, beliefs, and ambitions of girls and women.
We have a consistently high proportion of girls – around 40% – attending our Code Clubs and CoderDojos. But girls’ perceptions of computing, and their confidence, can be influenced hugely before they ever arrive at our clubs to give it a try – so much so that they may never arrive at all.
In this context, the differences we observed between the topics that women’s and men’s media cover are troubling. It really comes down to balance: there is absolutely nothing wrong with reading about fashion or beauty, but greater diversity in the women, interests, and careers that saturate our popular culture would undoubtedly impact the gender imbalance that persists in sectors such as technology and science.
When it comes to encouraging girls to take part in our digital skills activities, our approach is highly adaptable, but ultimately we are for everyone. We believe this inclusive approach is the most effective way of reinforcing that all genders are equally capable of enjoying and excelling at computing. It would be invaluable to see this reflected in popular culture.
This International Women’s Day, we’re encouraging women to consider the ways in which we are real role models. Join us to celebrate the #RealRoleModels who inspire you, and share the fantastic contributions of girls and women in technology.
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Today, ESA Education and the Raspberry Pi Foundation are proud to celebrate the International Day of Women and Girls in Science! In support of this occasion and to encourage young women to enter a career in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics), CSA astronaut Jenni Sidey discusses why she believes computing and digital making skills are so important, and tells us about the role models that inspired her.
Jenni Sidey inspires young women in science with Astro Pi
Today, ESA Education and the Raspberry Pi Foundation are proud to celebrate the International Day of Women and Girls in Science! In support of this occasion and to encourage young women to enter a career in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics), CSA astronaut Jenni Sidey discusses why she believes computing and digital making skills are so important, and tells us about the role models that inspired her.
The International Day of Women and Girls in Science is part of the United Nations’ plan to achieve their 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. According to current UNESCO data, less than 30% of researchers in STEM are female and only 30% of young women are selecting STEM-related subjects in higher education
That’s why part of the UN’s 2030 Agenda is to promote full and equal access to and participation in science for women and girls. And to help young women and girls develop their computing and digital making skills, we want to encourage their participation in the European Astro Pi Challenge!
The European Astro Pi Challenge is an ESA Education programme run in collaboration with the Raspberry Pi Foundation that offers students and young people the amazing opportunity to conduct scientific investigations in space! The challenge is to write computer programs for one of two Astro Pi units — Raspberry Pi computers on board the International Space Station.
Astro Pi’s Mission Zero is open until 20 March 2019, and this mission gives young people up to 14 years of age the chance to write a simple program to display a message to the astronauts on the ISS. No special equipment or prior coding skills are needed, and all participants that follow the mission rules are guaranteed to have their program run in space!
To help many more people take part in their native language, we’ve translated the Mission Zero resource, guidelines, and web page into 19 different languages! Head to our languages section to find your version of Mission Zero and take part.
If you have any questions regarding the European Astro Pi Challenge, email us at astropi@esa.int.
The post Jenni Sidey inspires young women in science with Astro Pi appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
Today is the official launch day of Astro Pi Mission Zero, part of the 2018–2019 European Astro Pi Challenge, an ESA Education programme run in collaboration with us at Raspberry Pi. In this challenge, students and young people get the chance to have their computer programs run in space on the International Space Station!
Students and young people will have until 20 March 2019 to form teams and write a simple program to display their personal message to the astronauts onboard. The Mission Zero activity can be completed in a couple of hours with just a computer and an internet connection. You don’t need any special equipment or prior coding skills, and all participants that follow the guidelines are guaranteed to have their programs run in space.
This year, to help many more people take part in their native language, we have translated the Mission Zero resource, guidelines, and web page into 19 different languages! Head to our languages section to find your version of Mission Zero.
To participate, the teams’ teacher or mentor needs to register for a classroom code that will let students submit their programs. Teams then follow our online resource to write their programs using the browser-based Trinket emulator: with just a few lines of Python, your team will create a program for one of the two Astro Pi computers aboard the ISS!
Each team’s program will run for 30 seconds aboard the Space Station, visible for all the astronauts including this year’s challenge ambassadors: ESA astronaut and ISS Commander Alexander Gerst and CSA astronaut David Saint-Jacques.
Astro Pi returns for a new 2018/19 challenge!
Ever wanted to run your own experiment in space? Then you’re in luck! ESA Education, in collaboration with the Raspberry Pi Foundation, is pleased to announce the launch of the 2018/2019 European Astro Pi Challenge!
Every team that submits a valid Mission Zero entry will also receive a certificate showing the flight path of the ISS above Earth at the exact time their code ran!
The challenge is open to teams of students and young people who are aged 14 years or younger (at the time of submission) and from ESA Member or Associate Member States*. The teams must have at least two and no more than four members, and they must be supervised by an adult teacher or mentor.
Have fun, and say hi to the astronauts from us!
The European Astro Pi Challenge is an ESA Education project run in collaboration with the Raspberry Pi Foundation. It offers students and young people the amazing opportunity to conduct scientific investigations in space by writing computer programs that run on Raspberry Pi computers on board the International Space Station (ISS). The Astro Pi Challenge is divided into two separate missions with different levels of complexity: Mission Zero (the basic mission), and Mission Space Lab (one step further). This year’s Mission Space Lab is closing for applications at the end of October. Click here for more information about it.
*ESA Member States in 2018:
Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom.
ESA Associate States in 2018: Canada, Slovenia
In the framework of the current collaboration agreement between ESA and the Republic of Malta, teams from Malta can also participate in the European Astro Pi Challenge. ESA will also accept entries from primary or secondary schools located outside an ESA Member or Associate State only if such schools are officially authorised and/or certified by the official Education authorities of an ESA Member or Associate State (for instance, French school outside Europe officially recognised by the French Ministry of Education or delegated authority).
The post Astro Pi Mission Zero: guarantee your code’s place in space appeared first on Raspberry Pi.
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