A Greek student team excelled for yet another time in the international competition «Zero Robotics 2015», which invites students to write programs and to control a satellite (SPHERES) in space.

Zanneio Stardust team after its second place finish last year participated for the second consecutive year in the competition. The team excelled once again reaching the finals as a member of the Greek-American alliance BACON Zanneio 2485.

More than 100 upper secondary school students from across Europe and Russia met at the Euro Space Centre in Belgium, close to ESA’s Redu Station, to participate in the tournament. This is the fourth time that the International Space Station has been turned into a gaming platform for the ultimate robot game.

The teams spent several months applying their maths and physics problem-solving skills and writing code to control the SPHERES onboard the ISS. SPHERES – short for Synchronised Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites – are volleyball-sized satellites which hover around the weightless ISS using 12 jets powered by compressed gas. These autonomous robots have their own power and propulsion but use the students’ code to navigate. SpySPHERES was the game theme for the 2015 tournament. On a playing field full of obstacles and challenges, pairs of teams competed against each other to take photographs of the other satellite and beam them back to Earth, whilst avoiding being photographed themselves.