The Field Campaign of IGLUNA 2020, initially planned to take place in Lucerne from 10-19 July 2020, has been replaced by an online version due to the current Covid-19 pandemic.
Now, during those dates, the 15 international student teams will present their projects on the topic “A Space Habitat With Remote Operations” in virtual format. The Swiss Space Center is setting up a Virtual Field Campaign to support the projects’ tests remotely, bring the spotlight on the teams’ involvement during the past academic year, welcome space experts for public presentations, and enable the IGLUNA outcomes to be accessible throughout the world.
Coordinated by the Swiss Space Center, the ESA_Lab@CH Project IGLUNA 2020 offers 15 student teams the opportunity to participate in an international, collaborative project on a visionary space topic: a space habitat with remote control operations. In one academic year, more than 130 students from 10 countries gathered their knowledge to design, build and test technologies for a space habitat to sustain life in an extreme environment around six research topics: life support systems, habitat conception and structure, communication and navigation, power management, human well-being and science.
The participating countries are Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, Poland, USA, Germany, Greece, Estonia, United Kingdom, Romania.
The Virtual Field Campaign will consist of several kinds of online events: inauguration, student project shows, guests presentations, space awards ceremony and closure. Jan Wörner, Director General of the European Space Agency (ESA), will officially open the Virtual Field Campaign on 10 July. Over six consecutive days (10 – 16 July), every team will independently showcase their project, each during an online one-hour presentation. Throughout these live events, the public will be able to interact with the teams and experts through an online Q&A section. Finally, within the framework of the space awards, three teams that show the greatest motivation and involvement will have the opportunity to exclusively present their project to Jan Wörner. The preliminary programme of the Virtual Field Campaign is available online and the livestream platforms will be defined soon.
In addition, the Swiss Space Center will keep the IGLUNA mission alive by renewing the activity to launch IGLUNA 2020/2021. The call for projects will be open from the 15 May to 30 June 2020 in the Open Space Innovation Platform (OSIP) of ESA. The selected student projects will start in September this year and conclude in July 2021 at a Field Campaign in Lucerne, at the VERKEHRSHAUS – Swiss Museum of Transport and on top of Mount Pilatus.
