The countdown begins! Astro Pi participants have their programs run on the International Space Station

Starting from last week, young people participating in the European Astro Pi Challenge 2024/25 are having their programs run in space! Astronauts on board the International Space Station (ISS) have been busy setting up two Raspberry Pi computers, called Astro Pis, ready to receive the programs.

The European Astro Pi Challenge is an ESA Education project run in collaboration with the Raspberry Pi Foundation. It offers young people the amazing opportunity to conduct scientific investigations in space, by writing computer programs that run on the Astro Pis on board the ISS. It has two categories: Mission Zero, where young people write programs that display pixel art on the Astro Pis’ LED screens, and Mission Space Lab, where more advanced learners attempt to calculate the speed of the ISS by writing programs that gather data from the Astro Pi camera and sensors.

Mission Zero reaches more young people than ever

Mission Zero received 17,285 team submissions this year, representing 25,405 young people from ESA Member and Associate Member States. This marks the highest-ever level of participation in Mission Zero since the project started in 2017 — and nearly all of the participating teams (17,109 out of 17,285) have achieved ‘flight status’, meaning that their programs will run in space.

Promoting diversity and inclusion is a goal of our projects. Through partnerships with local institutions, youth organisations and community events we’ve seen Mission Zero reach even more young people from traditionally underrepresented groups.

This year, the Mission Zero project guide featured new coded pixel art examples for teams to remix and reinterpret. Many teams also created their own artworks and animations, with amazing creativity and coding skills on display.

New highs for Mission Space Lab

Mission Space Lab teams were tasked again this year with writing programs to collect data from cameras and sensors on the Astro Pis to calculate the ISS’s speed. With some new tools at their disposal this year, such as the online replay tool, we have been really pleased to see 325 teams submit their programs. This has resulted in 309 teams being awarded “flight status” - their programs will run on the Astro Pis and they will receive the data their program captures in their 10-minute run time. This offers teams the amazing opportunity to capture their own images and sensor data in space.

At Mission Control we have been really pleased to see more teams submitting their code and achieving flight status this year than in 2023/24. There are a couple additions that we believe have made it easier for teams to submit this year; firstly, Mission Space Lab teams can now test their programs online using the Astro Pi Replay Tool. This gives them a chance to see if their program will work on the real Astro Pis on board the ISS by replaying historical data sets captured from previous missions. Secondly, teams have been able to use the Picamzero python library, which makes it easier to use PiCamera2 functionality.

Deployment

Mission Zero and Mission Space Lab teams with flight status had their programs sent up to the ISS. Astronauts have been busy setting up the Astro Pi computers ready to receive the programs and putting them into position. Starting last week, the programs began running and the collected data will be sent down from the ISS to Earth by the end of this week.

In June, Mission Zero and Mission Space Lab teams will receive certificates of participation with the exact times their programs ran on the ISS, along with the coordinates of where the ISS was above the Earth. Mission Space Lab teams will also receive a zip file with the data their programs collected.

None of this would have been possible without the hard work of all the mentors, teachers, educators, and club leaders that organise the teams of young people doing the Astro Pi missions.

Let’s stay curious! STEM education emphasizes problem-solving and critical thinking, which coding supports from the start. By teaching young people coding, they learn about algorithms, patterns, and data structures—key concepts that are fundamental in all STEM disciplines.