In collaboration with Esprit Sorcier, Instant Science, Planète Sciences, La Région Occitanie, and the Academies of Toulouse and Paris, CNES CNES has offered lots of workshops for students linked to the international educational project Mission X “Train Like an Astronaut,” run by ESA and the UK Space Agency and coordinated in France by CNES through the ESERO France educational program.
Mission X travels across France
On October 6 and 7, workshops were held at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris, with visits to our stands by Ms. Sylvie Retailleau, Minister of Higher Education, Research, and Innovation, and Mr. Philippe Baptiste, President and CEO of CNES, as well as several reports and interviews on Fred Courant’s dedicated program “Esprit Sorcier.”
From October 6 to 14, mobile workshops will be held across Occitanie in Carcassonne, with another visit from Ms. Retailleau and Ms. Nadia Pellefigue, Vice President of the Occitanie Region, followed by Nîmes, Lisle Jourdain, Beaumont De Lomagnes, and Saint Gaudens.
From October 9 to 13, online challenges for all schools in France, with 46 classes participating, representing almost 800 students! The winning entries are online here.
Training tomorrow’s astronauts
Among the most coveted challenges is a spacewalk in an astronaut suit to repair a broken part of the International Space Station without letting go of Ariane’s thread, so as not to get lost in the black, freezing, suffocating vacuum of space, and within a limited time, because oxygen resources are limited! But this could only be done after a few physical training exercises, with measurements of parameters such as body temperature and heart rate before and after exercise.
The astronaut candidates also tested their reflexes, memory, stress management in the case of anomalies and emergency procedures, their ability to react and work as a team, qualities that are essential for human space exploration missions. Every good astronaut must also be a good handyman and must be able, for example, to produce their own energy source. So, how does solar energy work? Here we are with budding astronauts trying their hand at engineering!
Finally, decision-making when things don’t go as planned in a hostile and challenging environment is a crucial skill that can be learned! The astronaut trainees were thrown into a disaster mission to explore the moon, where they had to make quick but thoughtful decisions to save the crew first and foremost and preserve the initial objectives as much as possible—a beautiful and necessary team effort, no doubt about it!
To learn more about Mission X, visit the project page
