Odysseus contest reveals the next generation of scientists
Students from all over Europe demonstrated their interest in science during the Odysseus contest.
The contestants, from 14 to 18 years old, had to design a project related to space exploration and research. Over 430 high school students from 17 European countries participated. After the national and international selections, 5 teams were selected as laureates of the contest. The winning pupils and their coaches were invited to visit the astronaut-training center in Cologne, Germany and to attend the awards ceremony and event at Space Expo, the museum of ESA ESTEC based in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.
The “Orion Innovative Modular Settlement” project1 from Romania was the most popular project according to the vote of other participants. The ORION IMS team, which created this project, comes from the Tudor Vianu National High School of Computer Science. They designed a space settlement taking into account many parameters such as the location, the protection from the radiation, the potential damage and emergency situations, the construction procedure, water, food and energy supply, etc.
The “lLhost” team2, from Slovakia, was the laureate in the Solar System category with the project “An Abundance Comparison and Distribution of C, S, O and noble gasses He, Ar and Ne in the Atmosphere of Jupiter”. The pupils charted the composition of the atmosphere of Jupiter using real data from different telescopes and satellites. Finally they produced a map of Jupiter’s atmosphere.
The “Exoplants” team3 from Greece was the laureate in the Co-evolution of Life category. The team explored “the color of plants on another planet?”. They performed several experiments to answer this question. Similar investigations have been done in the International Space Station [ISS] concerning the shape of plants in zero gravity environments.
The Bay House Schools team4 from the United Kingdom was the laureate with the project “INTERcore” under the Spaceship – Global Cooperation category. For their first participation in a science contest, they successfully carried out the various tasks of their experiment. The aim of the project was to visit a comet and, using a probe, analyze it for any evidence that comets could have brought the key building blocks of life to Earth.
The team “Stradosphere”5 was the laureate from amongst the non-EU countries participants. Their project explored the Earth’s atmosphere, looking at the jet steam. To achieve this, they launched a helium balloon, with a camera, a microphone and a miniature violin attached that flew to an altitude of 33 km.
The teams enjoyed participating in the contest and will become ambassadors to inspire other students to take part in science education projects and initiatives.
“The Odysseus Contest was a unique opportunity to enforce our desire to learn. It was really a magical trip to space exploration via research and inquiry based methods,” said the Exoplants team members.
The contest was co-organised by the European Physical Society together with Ellinogermaniki Agogi, Signosis and Space Expo, financed by a grant from the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme.
More information and full descriptions of the winning projects can be found on the Odysseus contest website.
- The members of the ORION IMS team are Ioana Bica, Cristian Zaharia, Matei Militaru, Stefan Gramatovici and Horia Clement with their coach Ioana Stoica. [↩]
- The members of the lLhost team are Marek Holiencin, Michaela Brchnelovà, Valentàna Cepcovà and Roman Sekej with their coach Lucia Bartozelovà. [↩]
- The members of the Exoplants team are Efstathios Biritis, Antigoni Georgiopoulou, Ioannis Kakalis, Eleni Chrisikopoulou, and Dimitra Koufi with their coach Ioannis Chiotelis. [↩]
- The members of the INTERcore team are Samuel Thompson, Daniel Ellis, Jack Turner, Jack Marshal and Ellen Watts with their coach Ian Lowther. [↩]
- The members of the Stradosphere team are Jonathan Harbakk, Svein Eirik Haaland and Christopher Gundersen with their coach Per Veraas. [↩]
