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.

Spheres: Developing a Space Debris Removal Skill - YouTube

In-orbit rendezvous is a potential solution to address space debris removal, considered to be the predominant issue facing the arena of outer space security and safety.

DARPA, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is using an unusual resource to develop rendezvous capability with out of control satellites: a high school competition.

“The control procedures that were developed for the Zero Robotics Challenge will certainly benefit the Phoenix program,” said Dave Barnhart, DARPA program manager.

He was referring to DARPA’s defunct satellite recycling project, “but they also potentially have much wider implications for space-based technologies.”

Participants in the Zero Robotics Autonomous Space Capture Challenge designed algorithms to control a bowling-ball-sized programmable satellite known as SPHERES.

There are three SPHERES currently aboard the ISS for use in such experiments in an environment where there is no risk of losing the test subjects.

The algorithms were applied across three different scenarios in which the SPHERES satellite simulated an active spacecraft approaching an object tumbling through space.

The Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient Experimental Satellites (SPHERES)

Through the Phoenix program, DARPA aims to catch retired communication satellites in geosynchronous orbit in order to collect and re-use some of their components.

To do this, the Phoenix spacecraft will have to perform a delicate dance to safely synchronize movements with tumbling satellites and to be able to deploy tools and attach or remove targeted parts.

Extended use of such a technology could allow the removal of more general space debris like fragments from collisions and exploded rocket bodies or objects from extravehicular activities.