2018 Space Summer School – Science & Technology
Another summer begins and so does Summer Schools’ time! Once again we are in charge of designing, preparing, and coordinating all the activities for ESA‘s ESAC‘s annual Space Summer School. Over a hundred kids come to this daycamp every year looking up for fun and friends, but also hoping they will learn awesome new facts about space science and build some useful space-technology skills. Not to disappoint them, we must make a big effort and win a race against time creating devices, writing software and designing new activities for them. But with the latest technology at the service of education and scientific dissemination; and our professional team of physics, engineers, programmers, and educators; success is guaranteed.
We carry out many activities every day and by the end of the month we have accomplished more than a handful of them, so it would be preposterous to describe them all here. But we have intended to make a representative abstract of our achievements in the following lines.
Augmented Reality Planetary Art Exhibition
ESA’s ESAC D-bulding hosts during this summer an Artistic-Scientific-Technological exhibition by SpaceRobotics, where planetary exploration is presented in an absolutely innovative way.
Rosetta’s Final Images
We are proud to announce that our collaboration with the European Space Agency is bearing fruit and a two-minutes-long video displaying Rosetta’s final images before programmed impact on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko has already been released. It took several weeks of meetings and complex data processing at the European Space Astronomy Center, but after taking a look at the results we believe it was worth the effort.
2020 ExoMars’ Rover, the final design.
ExoMars 2020 won’t be launched until… guess it… 2020, but missions are always designed years before the launching date, so ExoMars’ 2020 Rover’s final design has already been presented. Although we already had figures from previous sketches, we rushed on to create the first available scaled model of the rover’s latest and final design. (more…)
Satellite Building Game
How cool would it be for students in schools or universities to learn about the space industry by building their own satellite? Although satellites are much cheaper now and some schools and universities do launch CubeSats once in a while, this is still unaffordable for most of the centers. And even if money is not a problem, time may be, as designing and building a satellite, however small it may be, requires a lot of time. Nevertheless, we found a solution for students to learn about the space industry while having fun designing and building their own affordable satellites in just a few hours.
Astronaut Lili’s PodCast
Space Robotics presents “Astronaut Lili’s PodCast” a new educative audio resource for kids to learn science anywhere anytime. Play it in the car while driving back home, during the weekend’s family evening, or at the school in science lessons. We provide the material for free, where and when to use it, that’s up to you.
CESAR Solar Observatory Automatization Upgrades
We are happy to announce that the upgrading of CESAR’s Solar Observatory conducted by Space Robotics has concluded successfully. The telescopes are already back to work, the new devices perform just as expected, and the observatory is now automatized and works on its own without human intervention.
JUICE, the final design.
JUICE won’t be launched until June 2022 but the final design has already been presented. On request of the JUICE Project team, we have created the first ever scale model of JUICE’s final design.
The very best 3D 67P for the CAESAR team
We have created the very best 3D model of the comet 67P for NASA’s CAESAR development team.
Software and Documentation for TBT Robotic Telescope
We have recently assembled the software for a completely new space-related project: TBT, a robotic telescope that will look for unidentified objects close to Earth.
Galileo Satellite Scale Model
We release our latest 3D creation: a Galileo satellite scale model. This model was designed from scratch under contract with ESA’s Galileo Programme.
Ariane 5 stage by stage Scale Model
Once again we bring to you a new 3D scale model of a space exploration related object. Our most recent creation is the famous Ariane 5, ESA’s most powerful rocket currently in service. The model not only has fine details but it’s also detachable into the different stages.
Science Cases’ Web-Tools for the ESA – ESAC educational project CESAR
As part of the ESAC – ESA (European Space Astronomy Centre of the European Space Agency) educational project CESAR (Cooperation through Education in Science and Astronomy Research) we have been developing Science Case Web-Tools to complement the educational products of the project. This new software is specifically designed both to ease the task of solving the Science Cases and to make them more fun and attractive to students.
Augmented Reality Spacecrafts
We have recently tested our new app and although it needs further development it is already functional. As good as it sounds, just turn on your phone and be ready to see Augmented Reality Spacecrafts wherever you point.
Herschel Space Observatory Virtual Reality App
On the occasion of Herschel end of post-operations event at ESAC (European Space Astronomy Centre), the Space Division of Nubalo Studios, as part of the CESAR project, and in collaboration with the ESDC (ESAC Science Data Centre) has created a Virtual Reality Application to commemorate the mission, approaching Herschel’s observations to the public. With this app you can watch some videos of the mission and access information about the observatory, but by far, the best function is a 360º HiPS map with PACS and SPIRE observations.