Our brand-new Astro Pis are now ready for students' experiments!
In brief
Our new Astro Piswere launched to the ISS on 21 December 2021 and are now fully operational!
The Astro Pis completed a commissioning process performed by technical experts on-ground along with ESA astronaut, Matthias Maurer, on the ISS. Some of their new functionalities were tested, giving us the opportunity to show you the very first pictures they took of Earth!
In-depth
After the successful launch of our new Astro Pis (phew!), the computers were received on-station by ESA Astronaut Matthias Maurer, who performed a series of steps to prepare them for work. See the process and a message from Matthias to all the participants in Astro Pi below.
Access the video
Once the Astro Pis were set-up, each took a turn in the Node 2 nadir window, where they ran a program to collect a batch of images using their new cameras and lenses.
The teams participating in Astro Pi Mission Space Lab 2021-22 will receive a collection of these images, which can be used, if needed, to train a machine learning model and to get an understanding of the type of pictures they can expect to see when their own experiments result come in May 2022.
Stay tuned for more news on Astro Pi and follow us and The Raspberry Pi Foundation on social media: