Astro Pi Mission Space Lab 2022/23: The results

Mission Space Lab

In Mission Space Lab, teams of young people aged up to 19 work together to create scientific experiments to be carried out on the International Space Station. Their mission is to design and create a computer program to run on the two Astro Pi computers — space-adapted Raspberry Pis with cameras and a range of sensors.  

This year, Mission Lab had four phases, starting in September and finishing in June each year. In Phase 1, 771 teams of young people sent us ideas for experiments that could run on the Astro pi computers, using the different sensors and camera modules (Visible light or Near Infrared). Their ideas were reviewed and those that would work on the Astro Pis go through to the next phase. In Phase 2, 498 teams were invited to create programs in Python to conduct their experiments and were sent Astro Pi kits to help test their programs. In February this year, 294 teams submitted programs that passed the rigorous testing at Astro Pi Mission Control to achieve ‘flight status’ and progress to Phase 3.

The programs that teams submitted were deployed on the ISS and ran for up to 3 hours, collecting data for their experiments during May 2023. Then the teams were sent their data and started working on their analysis and writing their Phase 4 reports. Many teams chose to compare their data with other sources, including images captured from previous years, to identify patterns and phenomena.

We were especially excited to see the results from the experiments this year, particularly with the upgraded Astro Pi units and being positioned in a new observation window (WORF) on the ISS. This allowed teams to capture high-quality images with a much wider field of view to use in their analysis.

Phase 4 reports

At Mission Control we feel very privileged to see the culmination of the team’s experiments in the final reports. So, let’s share a few highlights from this year’s experiments:

Team Aretusa, from Sicily, were exploring the effects of climate change by cross-referencing the images they captured from the ISS with historical images from Google Earth. They used Near Infrared (NIR) photography to capture images, and NDVI (Normalised Difference Vegetation Index) image processing in their analysis. Below you can see where they have compared data of Saudi Arabia from 1987 to 2023 that shows increasing levels of vegetation that is attempting to restore on degraded land. 

Team Barrande, from the Czech Republic, were attempting to train an AI model to identify the Earth’s topography. Their program used the Astro Pi computer's Coral machine learning dongle to train their AI model’s image analysis while on the ISS, then compared these images with another model they trained back on Earth. By comparing the two they could see how well the two models had identified different features on Earth. The below selection shows the image they captured, the AI-processed image on the Astro Pi, and the AI-processed image using their model back on Earth.

Team DHSpace, from Portugal, measured the intensity of the Earth’s magnetic fields along the orbit path of the ISS. Using the magnetometer on the Astro Pi, they were able to track changes of intensity and map their readings to the ISS coordinates, showing the difference in the Earth’s magnetic field between the North Pole (points 1 and 2 on the chart below) and the South Pole (points 3 and 4). 

And the winning teams are…

The judges from ESA and the Raspberry Pi Foundation have been busy reviewing all of the reports to assess the scientific merit, process, experiment design and analysis and use of the Astro Pi hardware.  The ten winning teams come from from Italy, Romania, Czech Republic, Canada, United Kingdom, Portugal, Ireland, and Denmark, and will each receive a goody bag to recognise their achievement.

Winning teams

Team	Experiment theme	Based at	Country
Magnet47	Life on Earth	O'Neill CVI	Canada
Aretusa	Life on Earth	Liceo Da Vinci Floridia	Italy
ASaether	Life on Earth	"Andrei Saguna" National College	Romania
Barrande	Life on Earth	Gymnázium Joachima Barranda Beroun	Czech Republic
Escapers	Life in space	Code Club	Canada
Futura	Life in space	Scuola Svizzera Milano	Italy
StMarks	Life on Earth	St Mark's Church of England School	United Kingdom
DAHspace	Life on Earth	EB 2,3 D. Afonso Henriques	Portugal
T5Clouds	Life on Earth	Dominican College	Ireland
PiNuts	Life in space	TEKNISK GYMNASIUM, Skanderborg	Denmark

 Along with the winning teams, we would like to commend the following teams for their experiments.

Highly commended teams

Team	Experiment theme	Based at	Country
Parsec	Life on Earth	Liceo Da Vinci Pascoli Gallarate	Italy
Celeste	Life on Earth	International School of Florence	Italy
LionTech	Life on Earth	Colegiul Național ”Mihai Eminescu”	Romania
OHSpace	Life in space	Oxford High School	United Kingdom
Magneto	Life on Earth	The American School of The Hague	Netherlands
GreenEye	Life on Earth	ROBOTONIO	Greece
Primus	Life on Earth	Independent coding club	Germany

You can click on a team name to read the team's experiment report.

All of the teams whose Mission Space Lab programs ran on the ISS will receive a certificate signed by ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti. The winning and highly commended teams will also be invited to a live video Q&A with one of the ESA astronauts in the autumn. Look out for more information about this soon! 

Congratulations to all Mission Space Lab teams 2022/23

Huge congratulations to all the Mission Space Lab participants from everyone at ESA and RPF— we hope you found it fun and inspiring to take part.

And a big thank you to everyone who has been involved in the European Astro Pi Challenge this year. An amazing 26,745 young people from 29 countries had run their programs in space! We can’t wait to do it all again. It’s not just us who want to say thanks and well done though — here’s a very special video from ESA Astronaut Matthias Maurer, direct from the ISS.

When will the 2023/24 European Astro Pi Challenge take off?

The European Astro Pi Challenge 2023/24 will launch on 18 September 2023. Mission Zero will open in September, and we will also be announcing some exciting news about the new Mission Space Lab in September too. Stay tuned!