ESA SPHERES Mission: Activating Spheres robots

Spheres robots on the International Space Station. 

The volleyball-sized satellites have their own power, propulsion and navigation systems and are used in an international competition for secondary-school students. 

Each year a tournament is held where students earn points by writing control algorithms to operate the spheres and by choosing the best tactics to win the game.

Credit: ESA

Code, play and command your space droid, students across Europe can bring a squadron of mini-satellites to life on the International Space Station as the ultimate space robot game.

For the fourth year, the Zero Robotics tournament will turn the Station into a gaming arena for European secondary-school pupils.

The competition challenges youngsters to write instructions that control volleyball-sized satellites through a virtual field mined with obstacles.

The Spheres, (Synchronised Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites), obey remote commands and can hover around the weightless Station using their own power, propulsion and navigation.

The tournament is not only about writing code. Participants must solve problems, apply their maths and physics knowledge and work in teams to achieve success.

European contenders should start working now on self-developed software and plan their strategy for the competition, ready for when the final details of the mission are unveiled in September.

May the code be with you
The contest starts with online simulations of increasing difficulty. Competitors can create and visualise their code to get ready for the game from a web browser and free of charge.

Models of the Spheres robots sent to the International Space Station at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

The robots are programmed by students on Earth to perform operations based on real-life situations. 

Compressed air is used to move the spheres in all directions. 

ESA participation in the pilot programme of Zero Robotics involved collaborating with various universities and academic institutes. 

ESA provided the opportunity to send teachers from universities to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to receive training in Spheres operation and coding. 

The skills learnt were then passed on to the local high school teachers whose teams participated in the event. 

Credit: MIT

After playing against other teams in simulation rounds to build the highest scores, finalists will see their commands ruling the Spheres on the Space Station.

ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti will support the European teams, running the live competition from the front line on the orbital outpost.

NASA astronauts Kevin Ford (background) and Tom Marshburn, setting up two Spheres robots in the Kibo laboratory on the International Space Station. 

The volleyball-sized satellites have their own power, propulsion and navigation systems and are used in an international competition for high-school students. 

Each year a tournament is held where students earn points by writing control algorithms to operate the spheres and by choosing the best tactics to win the game. 

The European finalists of 2013 consisted of six alliances from Italy, Germany, Spain and Portugal. 

Credit: NASA

The finals will take place in January, with the US teams at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the European teams at ESA's Technical Centre, ESTEC, in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.

ISS Expedition 34 Crew Safe Landing in Kazakhstan

NASA's Kevin Ford and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin, who had manned the $100 billion orbital outpost since October as Expedition 34, landed in cloudy weather at 7:06 a.m. Moscow time (0306 GMT) northeast of the town of Arkalyk.

They had spent 144 days aboard the multinational ISS on their space journey of almost 61 million miles (98 million km).

"The landing was energetic and exciting," Russian TV showed Novitskiy as saying.

NASA television said the deorbit burn and other events during the descent had gone flawlessly. It said the capsule had landed upright, almost hitting its bull's eye target in thick fog.

"Oleg Novitskiy reported to search and recovery teams that the crew is feeling good," NASA television said. "Everything seems to be in order."

Due to hampered visibility, it took a few minutes before helicopters with Russian search and recovery teams could locate the Soyuz capsule after its landing.

The first images shown by Russia's Vesti-24 television featured rescue workers standing in a snow-covered steppe opening the hatch of the capsule.

The three smiling astronauts were seated on semi-reclined chairs and covered with blue thermal blankets. They were then carried to a nearby inflatable medical tent.

On Friday, fog and freezing rain at the landing site in Kazakhstan prevented helicopters from setting up for the crew's return to Earth.

In preparation for their departure, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield took the helm of the space station on Wednesday, becoming the first Canadian to take command of the outpost.

It is only the second time in the 12-year history of the station, a project of 15 nations that has been permanently staffed since November 2000, that command has been turned over to someone who is not American or Russian.

Hadfield will be part of a three-man skeleton crew until NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin arrive later this month.

NASA ISS Commander Kevin Ford Offers Holiday Greetings

From 250 miles above the Earth Expedition 34 Commander Kevin Ford of NASA downlinked his Festive holiday greetings from the ESA Columbus /Destiny laboratory on the International Space Station.

NASA ISS Images: Expedition Crew Preps for Soyuz Launch

NASA astronaut Kevin Ford (left), Expedition 33 flight engineer and Expedition 34 commander; Soyuz Commander Oleg Novitskiy (center) and Flight Engineer Evgeny Tarelkin (right) clasp hands Sept. 21, 2012 in front of a Soyuz vehicle mock-up as they wrap up two days of final qualification exams at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia.

The trio is scheduled to launch Oct. 23 in their Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for a five-month mission on the International Space Station.

Credit: NASA