Winners receive Space for Sustainability Award at EISC
The 12th annual Space for Sustainability Award was presented to the first-place winner and special mention of the jury on 23 Sept. at the European Interparliamentary Space Conference (EISC) Plenary Session in Luxembourg. After presenting their project ideas, each winner was handed their award by Dr. Gérard Schockmel, m.p., President of the Luxemburgish EISC delegation and Dr. Kai-Uwe Schrogl, ESA special advisor for political affairs.
Alexander Rutzler won 1st Prize with a project idea titled “Eco-Friendly Production of Titanium and Lunar Oxygen”. His idea deals with the environmental challenges of extracting titanium, an essential metal for space missions. Here is his project description:
Titanium is an essential metal for all of ESA’s most ambitious space missions due to its low density, chemical resistance, and high strength. Despite its abundance, titanium extraction remains challenging, expensive, and environmentally harmful. With Europe relying heavily on titanium exports from Russia, an eco-friendly and European production method is urgently needed. The FFC process, which can utilize green electricity from sustainable sources to split titanium oxides into titanium and oxygen, offers a promising alternative. It also aligns with ESA lunar In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) efforts for a sustainable exploration of space, having been used to extract nearly 100% of oxygen from the metal oxides in lunar regolith. To be commercially successful, the FFC process however requires a new technological leap. Inspired by a more than a century-old liquid cathode technology, this paper presents a newly developed approach to transform the FFC process into a continuous and resource-efficient method to ecologically produce high-quality titanium for Europe’s space industry.
The Special Mention of the Jury was given to Fiona Poda for her project idea “A Future of Harmonizing Habitat: Satellite-AI Integration for Sustainable Urbanization and Wildlife Migration Management”. She describes her proposal:
Urban expansion poses significant challenges to wildlife conservation, particularly affecting the natural migration patterns of numerous species. This paper introduces an innovative solution that integrates machine learning (ML) techniques with geographic information system (GIS) tools to predict and mitigate the impacts of urbanization on animal migration. The proposal proposes a novel software platform that utilizes satellite data, ground-based sensors, and open-source environmental databases to create a comprehensive predictive model of animal migration and urban growth interactions.
The Space for Sustainability Award is a yearly competition run by ESA and EISC to raise awareness and ideas about how space can contribute to the sustainable development of Europe and the world. For more information on the award and previous winners, visit the award website