Mission Space Lab 2021-22 - 299 teams achieved Flight Status

Mission Space Lab gives teams of young people up to 19 years of age the opportunity to conduct scientific experiments aboard the ISS. Teams choose between two themes for their experiments, investigating either ‘Life in Space’ or ‘Life on Earth’. They can also choose whether to use a Coral machine learning accelerator during their experiment time. 

We received 88% more applications for Mission Space Lab this year compared to last year. In total, 799 teams applied in September 2021, so achieving  flight status is a huge accomplishment for the successful teams. It isn’t possible to run every experiment submitted, as there is only limited time available for the Astro Pis to be positioned in the ISS window. However, we are delighted that 67 more experiments will run on the ISS this year, compared to last year. Eliminating teams was very difficult; many unsuccessful teams had code that could not be run because of very small issues with their program.

Life in Space

Teams can use the Astro Pi to investigate life inside the Columbus module of the ISS using at least one of the Astro Pi’s sensors. 71 'Life in space' experiments will run this year. Teams are investigating a wide range of topics - for example how the the Earth’s magnetic field is experienced on the ISS in space, or comparing the environmental conditions that the astronauts experience to compared to those on Earth, directly beneath the ISS' orbit. This can include the colour and intensity of cabin light (using the new sensor included in the Mark II hardware), astronaut movement in the cabin (using the new PIR), and temperature and humidity to consider whether the cabin might be suitable for other life such as plants or bacteria.

Life on Earth

Teams can investigate features on the Earth’s surface using the camera on the Astro Pi, which is positioned to view Earth from a window on the ISS. This year, for the first time, teams could decide whether to use visible light or Infrared (IR) photography. 228 'Life on Earth' experiments will run this year and teams are using sensors to determine the precise location of the ISS when images are captured, to identify whether the ISS is flying over land or sea, or which country it is passing over. Other teams are using IR photography to examine plant health in different regions and the effects of deforestation.  Visible light photography is being used to analyse clouds, calculate the velocity of the ISS and classify biomes (desert, forest, grassland, wetland). The new hardware available this year encouraged 144 of the teams to include machine learning in their experiments.

Testing, testing

386 teams submitted experiment code as part of Phase 2 of Mission Space Lab this year. Every submission has been through a number of tests to make sure that they follow experiment rules, don’t compromise the safety and security of the ISS and will run without errors on the Astro Pis. This means that April is a very busy time for the Astro Pi team. We run these tests on a number of exact replicas of the new Astro Pis, including a final test to run every experiment that has passed all tests for the full 3 hour experiment time. The 299 experiments that achieved flight status will take over 5 weeks to run and 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. 

The 299 teams awarded flight status this year represent 23 countries and 1,205 young people, with 32% female participants and average team age of 15. Spain has the most teams progressing to the next phase (38), closely followed by the UK (34), Italy (27), Romania (23) and Greece (22).

87 teams submitted programs during Phase 2 of Mission Space Lab this year but did not pass testing and so could not be awarded Flight Status. We wish we could run every experiment that is submitted but unfortunately time on the ISS, especially on the nadir window is limited. Therefore many of the teams were not successful only because of small issues with their programs. These teams should be very proud to have designed an experiment that passed Phase 1 and made a Phase 2 submission. We recognise how much work all submitting teams have done. We hope to see you again in next year’s challenge. 

What next?

Once all of the experiments have run, we will send the teams the data collected by their experiments. Teams will then have time to analyse their data and write a short report to share their findings. Based on these reports, the ESA Education and Raspberry Pi Foundation experts will determine the winner 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 reading your reports.