A group of students from Centennial Collegiate Vocational Institute (CCVI) recently took part in the Astro Pi Challenge: Mission Space Lab, which “offers teams of young people the chance to run scientific experiments on board the International Space Station (ISS).”
The team of Shealteile B., Yu Chien, and Lily (aka SYL) designed an algorithm using the Python programming language that utilized a Raspberry Pi device with various sensors to determine the real-time position and speed of the ISS.
Their code was submitted to the European Space Agency (ESA) for review in February and is currently running on the ISS until the end of May 2025.
"It was a good opportunity to get together and try something interesting. It was really cool to see the pictures and comparisons show up and it felt really good to have everything work after many hours of debugging. But knowing our code made it to the ISS makes it all worth it,” the team said.
This is the first time CCVI has participated in a challenge like this and one Computer Science teacher Brad Cutten is proud to be part of.
"It's very, very neat to see something the students created running in space. What really struck me was how motivated the students were to learn new coding concepts, which went far beyond the curriculum. The team worked very well together and helped one another when things got tough. I'm extremely proud of Shealteile, Lily, and Yu Chein,” Cutten said.
“It was a lot of trial and error, mostly errors, but through our errors we learned a lot,” Shealteile commented.
Along with a special message from an ESA astronaut, the team will receive data from their program captured while running in space.