Writes Ali Juma. (L6th)
Over the half-term holidays, Kian C. (L6th) and I developed and tested a program which runs on a real computer on the International Space Station. The program is designed to make use of its scientific sensors, such as an accelerometer and a gyroscope, to determine the velocity of the ISS.
This was a great opportunity to explore how code is developed to be space-ready and resilient for a space station. The program had to run on a small credit-card sized microcontroller called a Raspberry Pi, which has just 8GB of RAM.
We were very lucky for our program to be accepted by the European Space Agency’s Astro Pi challenge, and our program successfully ran in the space station on 22nd April. We expect to receive back our data later in June.
We also received the opportunity to have a video call with an ESA astronaut, Pablo Álvarez Fernández, and ask him questions.
