Mission Zero is back for 2022/23!
In brief
The European Astro Pi Challenge launched on 12 September 2022 with Mission Space Lab. We are delighted to open registrations for Mission Zero today!
In-depth
What is Mission Zero?
Mission Zero offers young people the chance to have their code run in space! Write a simple program to take a reading from a sensor on an Astro Pi computer on board the International Space Station and display a personalised image for the astronauts to see as they go about their daily tasks.
Participation is free and open for young people up to age 19 in ESA Member States (see more details about eligibility on the Astro Pi website). This is a great activity for beginners to programming.
Entries for Mission Zero 2022/23 are open from 22 September 2022 to 17 March 2023.
All entries that meet the eligibility criteria and follow the official guidelines for participating in Mission Zero will have their program run in space for up to 30 seconds. Participants receive a certificate they can download which shows their program's exact start and end time, and the position of the ISS when their program ran — a piece of space science history to keep!
New this year
If you’ve participated in Mission Zero before you will notice lots of things have changed. New Mark II Astro Pi computers were sent to the ISS in 2021 and Mission Zero participants in the 21/22 challenge named the new Astro Pis in honour of two inspirational European scientists - Nikola Tesla and Marie Curie. Now we have a brand new project that uses the colour and luminosity sensor, which has never been available to Mission Zero programmers before!
You’ll also be the first to use our brand new online Python editor which makes it super easy to create your first Python program to run on our brand new Sense HAT web emulator. Everything can be done in a web browser, on any computer with internet access. No special hardware or prior coding skills are needed.
Finally, this year we’re challenging space-coders to create a colourful image that will be displayed on the Astro Pi’s LED matrix, using the data from the colour sensor to determine the background colour.
The theme for Mission Zero 2022/23 is ‘Flora and Fauna’. Images could represent any aspect of this theme, such as flowers, trees, animals, or insects. A single image is fine but you could also choose to program a series of images to make a short animation (each program can run for up to 30 seconds). Here are some examples of images created by Mission Zero 2021/22 participants. What will you create?
Mission Zero opens today and runs until 17 March 2023.
