ESA’s Laura Borella, coordinator of the programme, comments: “This year’s teams come from a truly wide range of backgrounds – in addition to engineering, we have students from psychology, business, as well as neuroscience. The programme provides them with opportunities for networking and collaboration and offers a great platform for exchange of ideas.”

At ESTEC, the teams were introduced to the Orbital Robotics Laboratory, which they will visit again to carry out their experiments in the coming months. Along the way, ESA engineers and mentors from the European Low Gravity Research Association will provide them with guidance on refining experimental designs, testing strategies, and help them advance towards their research objectives.