The 2016 Odysseus Contest Final took place from 5^th to 8^th July 2016, at the Euro Space Center in Transinne, Belgium, under the high patronage of the European Parliament.   The Final gathered the top Pioneers teams  and Explorers, winners at the national and regional stages, organized during the past academic year.

The 31 Odysseus finalists from 11 countries enjoyed four days full of fun and Space related experiences and engaged in a space science challenge that enabled them to showcase their skills, knowledge and talent.

Space mission simulations, astronaut training exercises, lectures about life in space and space industry were only a few of the programme activities. The finalists also visited the Redu ground station of the European Space Agency and the Observatory in Ardennes.

On Thursday 7^th of July, the Pionners and Explorers presented their entries in the Odysseus II International Jury Panel and whole process of the projects’ presentations was live streamed.

The winners in all categories, including the Skywalkers, which top entries were decided through on-line voting by all members of the Odysseus community, were announced on Friday 8^th July, in the 2016 Odysseus Winners Award Ceremony.

The 2016 Pioneers Finalists

The 2016 Explorers Finalists

How to fight fires with space technology

In the Redu Station of ESA

The Jury panel

Astronaut training

Cleaning space from the trash

…. more training and fun

Can you still do your tasks?

Watching distant planets

Presenting the project

Mission Red 2030

The Odysseus Semi – Final for Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia took place in Warsaw between 12 and 15 of April.

A considerable part of the semi – final consisted of presentations of the participating entries. All teams had the chance to demonstrate their knowledge and skills during their 20 – minute presentation and to answer to the questions from the Jury members and other participants.

Apart from the actual contest the participants took part in a number of outreach activities. They watched a show about Black Holes in the Planetarium Heavens of Copernicus and made scientific experiments in the Copernicus Science Centre.  They also took a tour in the SRCPAS labs and they visited the Astronomical Observatory in Ostrowik.  In the Observatory the participants experienced Fireplace, puns, guitar, celtic dances lesson and got familiarized with the routine works of training and observation of the Warsaw University Astronomical Observatory.

Results of the ODYSSEUS II Semi-Final, Warsaw 12 – 15 IV 2016

The top team in the Pioneers category was “KOSMICZNI_EKOLODZY”, consisting of Jakub Brach and Radosław Paluch from Świętochłowice, Poland with the project entitled „Śmietnik nad głową”.

The winner in the Exploers category was Jan Jędryszek, student in the Jagielonian University, with the project entitled “Why is the definition of life and life’s origins on Earth important in extraterrestrial research?”

A number of special awards was presented to the following contestants:

In the Pioneers category:

• Encouragement Award for their studies of Mars was presented to Robert Cīrulis and Matīss Norenberg from Krote, Latvia
• Award for Excellent presentation was presented to Annija Kliemane, Rojs Sergejevs, and Harijs Pēteris Broks From Skrundas, Latvia
• Award for the most visionary project was presented to Jakub Danielewicz and Julia Biały From Kraków, Poland
• Award for outstanding technical merit of the project was presented to Marcin Polak and Paweł Niedziela From Niedźwiada, Poland
• Award for the best scientific literature review was presented to Nemiria Zilinskaite, Arnas Tamasauskas, and Juste Skeiveryte from Šiauliai, Lithuania
• Award for the technical innovation of the project was presented to: Przemysław Litwin, Julia Niemczycka and Jakub Dworzański From Wrocław, Poland

In the Explorer Category:

• Achievement Award for the outstanding scientific experimentation was presented to Dawid Przystupski from Wrocław, Poland
• Achievement Award for the visionary project was presented to Bartłomiej Ziętek from Wrocław, Poland
• Encouragement Award for the academic excellence of her work was presented to Viktorija Leimane from Tukums, Latvia

JURY

The judging committee comprised of: Prof. Barbara Popielawska, Prof. Maria Agnieszka Bzowska, Ms Ausma Bruņeniece, Prof. Stanisław Zoła, Prof. Romualda Lazauskaite, Prof. Alexey Pamyatnykh, Dr. Andris Slavinskis and Dr. Magdalena Sroczyńska – Kożuchowska.

Participants and Judges outside the SRC PAS

The winners in the Pioneers category receiving their medals

Jan Jędryszek, winner in the Explorers category

Contestants in the Copernicus Science Centre

Experimenting in Copernicus Science Centre

In the fireplace

Tour in the labs of SRC

Altec and Politecnico di Torino organized the regional finals for Italy, Croatia, Slovenia and Malta in Turin at Altec premises. Six Pioneers teams coming from Italy and Croatia participated to the activities. The two Explorers teams from Italy and Croatia as well joined the other contestants in Graz, Austria.

During the two days there were visit opportunities to the Thales Alenia Space facilities, the Altec building and the Turin Polytechnic aerospace laboratories. In particular it was possible to visit the Cygnus module production, the iXV suborbital re-entry vehicle recovered after its mission, mars terrain, mars prototypes, control centres and cubesats.

There were lectures as well as meeting opportunities between students, teachers, space engineers and operators. Face to face discussions were a great chance to enhance the enthusiasm in space activities and exploration. All the students were really engaged with the projects.

All the projects had an excellent quality and all the presentations were extremely professional, especially when considering the age of the participants.

Sara Molinaroli, Linda Benin and Cesare Dal Degan, with their professor Massimo Bubani from Belfiore (Verona – Italy) presented a very beautiful mockup with a robot dedicated to look for habitability zones around stars, an argument of special interest during these days due to new discoveries.

Another project looking for new habitable planets, with a very beautiful presentation, was prepared by Lorena Kerep, Lorena Cvetković and Dominik Filipović, with their teacher Ana Popović, coming from Samobor – Croatia.

Mars was addressed by many projects. Elisabetta Callegaro, Francesco Roana and Giacomo Dal Toso with their teacher Marco Zoso from Valdagno (Vicenza – Italy) prepared a project of a Mars base with a lot of details. They made project tee-shirts as well.

A very special approach was followed by Tamara Rinati, Letizia Paone and Martina Auditore with their teacher Concetta D’Arrigo coming from Santa Teresa di Riva (Messina – Italy). They recorded a television program that was talking about technical discussions assembled with a lot of fun. For Turin’s finals the added a second episode very appreciated by the public.

Luca Cattani, Davide Cattani, Elia Mazzari and their teacher Elena Gabbiani from Piacenza (Italy) decided to place their very detailed base on the Moon. Their presentation provided a lot of information to sort out a big problem: how to make it self-sustaining.

There was another team: the winning one. Giulia Bassani, Nicola Timpano and the teacher Tommaso Marino from Collegno (Torino – Italy) prepared a mock-up and an excellent project presentation for a Mars base. They will show it in the European finals again, with additional refinements as the project is ongoing. In the meantime Giulia is training to become an astronaut.

The organizing team in Turin wishes to all the participant a successful follow on in their space adventures.

Arrival at Altec

All the participants on Mars

Goran our Croatian Judge

A robot looking for a habitable planet

Virtual Reality

Dominik, Ana, Lorena and Lorena

Giulia, Tommaso and Nicola

Concetta, Tamara, Letizia and Martina

Ellia, Luca, Davide and Elena

Giacomo, Elisabetta, Francesco and Marco

Sara, Linda, Cesare and Massimo

Polytechnics cubesat

Presentation about cubesat activities

The Odysseus regional semi-final for Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania was organised by the Czech Space Office in iQLANDIA Science center in Liberec from 4th April to 8th April 2016. The event featured an extensive hands-on activities programme and excursions when in addition to presenting their project entries in front of a jury, the semi-finalists visited space science-related laboratories, attended lectures, met space professionals and participated in fun-oriented activities with altogether 31 students from the region.

In a very exciting contest of 13 teams, two of the Pioneers teams tied for the first place due to the high quality of their presentations and they both qualified to the International Final.

1. The team from the Gymnasium Jaroslava Seiferta in Prague and Gymnasium Špitálská in Prague with the project “Finding prediscovery positions of minor planets”, ASTEROIDS in short, consisting of the students Jakub Janoušek, Lukáš Sláma and Michal Koldinský and coached by Mr Daniel Mareš. The team aimed at searching archive images of minor planets to improve their orbits. In case of few of them team provided more precise orbital parameters and they have discovered one unknown minor planet. However, this still has not been verified by the US Minor Planet Center. Their results show that the old databases still contain lots of useful data about minor planets and their properties.
2. The team from the “Tudor Vianu” National High School of Computer Science, with the project AstroVianu Lab, consisting of the the students Andreea Zaharia and Vlad Panait, coached by Ms Ioana Stoica. This project  is based on the concerns in astrobiology to determine whether or not an unexplored planet is habitable. Students have chosen the mission to implement a planetary rover to measure and, hence, study certain vital parameters on such a territory.

Team photo of all participants in the iQLANDIA Science center

Participants presenting their project in front of the evaluators

The winning teams receiving their medals

Half of the ten evaluators

The world’s first minisatellite MAGION-1

Tour of the Ionospheric observatory in Průhonice

The University of Graz hosted the regional event for Austria, Germany and Hungary in the Pioneers category and for Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece and Italy in the Explorers category. The team Hibah_977 from India, which toped the first round among non-EU entries, also participated in the regional semi-final for Pioneers.

It was really hard for the jury to select the three top projects (one in the Pioneers and two in the Explorers category), as all the participating projects were excellent. In the Pioneers category, AlphaTeam from Germany, consisting of Alexander Haake and Lukas Mohr qualified to the International Final with the project “Magnet Rocket”.

In the Explorers, Alice Antonelli with the project “Punto di vista orbital” won the first place and qualified to the Final of July. Dimitris Athanasopoulos and Konstantinos Karampelas with the project entitled “Moon Underground: Space Humanity’s Room” were awarded the second place and qualified also to the Final.

Alexander and Lukas with their teacher Mr Sven Hebestedt and Alice Antonelli between Univ.-Prof. Arnold Hanslmeier (left) and Univ.-Prof. Dr. Neuper, rector/vice-chancellor of the University of Graz, (on the right)