Students’ computer programs get data from space
This year, 25,707 students across Europe and Canada had their code run on the International Space Station (ISS) this year, marking the European Astro Pi Challenge’s 10th anniversary in style.
Astro Pi teams received their certificates and data yesterday, marking the closing stage of the challenge this year. On each certificate, they can see the exact time and location that the ISS was in orbit when their program ran.
Congratulations to everyone involved in this year’s challenge. Whether you’re a student, teacher, volunteer, or parent, we’d like to thank you for your participation and support in making this happen. Here’s a special message from ESA Astronaut Sophie Adenot, this year’s Astro Pi Ambassador.
The European Astro Pi Challenge is an ESA Education project run in collaboration with the Raspberry Pi Foundation, implemented by ESEROs at national level. It offers students the amazing opportunity to learn how to code and conduct scientific investigations in space, by writing computer programs that run on space-hardened Raspberry Pi computers, Astro Pis, on board the International Space Station.
Astro Pi has two missions that run every year; Mission Zero and Mission Space Lab.
Mission Zero
Mission Zero is a short Python coding activity where students create pixel art to display on the LEDs of the SenseHAT attached to the Raspberry Pi computers on board the ISS. We ran a total of 17,170 Mission Zero programs this year, created by 24,408 participants. Here’s a selection of some of those programs.
If you want to explore what Mission Zero teams have created, you can see all the programs that ran in space this year on this beautiful interactive mosaic. Can you find your teams’ pixel art?
Mission Space Lab
Mission Space Lab teams had to write a Python program to calculate the speed of the International Space Station (ISS) in km/s. Their programs capture data on the ISS's orientation and motion using the Astro Pi computers’ sensors or camera. A total of 387 teams achieved “flight status” and had their programs run on the ISS for 10 minutes each, representing 1,299 students.
Mission Space Lab teams will be receiving their certificates plus any data their programs captured on the ISS. This includes unique and beautiful images taken by the Astro Pi's High Quality camera of the Earth. What an incredible souvenir from space for them to keep. Here are a few images we were blown away by from the data sets this year.
Doing science in space
Strange things can happen when you try to do science in space. This year, we noticed that the colour balance in the same sequence of images was changing. This is particularly visible in images of oceans and seas. Why was this happening?
After a little investigation we realised that the white balance algorithm in the High Quality camera was adjusting the images to make them more pleasing to the eye, particularly if the photos were being taken as sunlight hitting the geolocation at dawn. This is an example of ‘blue shift’, where the spectrum of light is compressed when observing an object moving towards you. In this case, the Earth is turning towards the camera angle. Here's a little sequence of images that shows the effect.
What next
That’s a wrap for the 2025/2026 challenge, but the journey doesn't end here.
- On 12 June, we organise a final online event with ESA astronaut Pablo Álvarez Fernández. During the online event, Pablo will answer questions submitted by the Mission Space Lab teams. The event can be followed on YouTube through this link.
- Save the Date: Astro Pi 2026/2027 launches Monday 14 September.
- Mission Zero: We’ll be selecting new code examples from this year’s Mission Zero submissions for our next project guide.
- Mission Space Lab: We have some exciting technical updates coming for the next cohort of Space Lab teams.
In the meantime, stay curious, space travellers. The journey has only just begun!