Mission X | Closing event for the 2022 edition | ESERO - European Space Education Resource Center

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Mission X

Published on: Tuesday 3 June 2025

Mission X | Closing event for the 2022 edition

The final meeting of the Mission X educational project to raise awareness of sport and health, coordinated in France by CNES via the ESERO France program, was held on June 21, 2022, at the Cité de l'espace in Toulouse.

Since its launch by NASA in 2011, Mission X has involved more than 500,000 students across the globe in some 40 countries. The educational project, led by the ESA and UK Space Agency since 2018 and developed by space scientists and professional sports coaches working with astronauts, has two main objectives:

Physical activities to improve strength, endurance, balance, and team coordination ;
Scientific activities to enhance critical thinking, scientific reasoning, and teamwork skills, among other things.

Students set to attend the 2022 edition

This project inspires 8-12 year olds to eat healthily and exercise regularly in order to stay healthy, while raising their awareness of scientific and technical professions through the motivating image of the astronaut.

For the 2022 edition, more than 33,000 students worldwide, including more than 4,700 French students, took part in Mission X. These six months of effort culminated in a day at the Cité de l’espace in Toulouse, attended by around 100 students from Occitanie, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, and Hauts-de-France.

Astro-athletes awarded for their performances

At the closing event for the project in France, the young participants were awarded their participation certificates and enthusiastically presented some of their favorite scientific experiments and sporting activities, under the watchful eye of Cécile Fiachetti, a CADMOS expert from CNES who oversees some of the European experiments carried out on board the ISS.

Closing event for the Mission X “Train Like an Astronaut” project on June 21, 2022, at Cité de l’espace ©CNES/F. Lancelot, 2022

On the schedule:

Visit to the Cité de l’Espace, with a special focus on the temporary exhibition “Now in the ISS” ;
Meeting with Cécile Fiachetti, head of the Declic instrument at CNES, to present some experiments conducted by the Center for Assistance in the Development of Microgravity Activities and Special Operations (CADMOS) on the International Space Station (ISS) ;
Educational workshop entitled “How ESA recruits its astronauts,” designed and led by Cité de l’espace .
Award ceremonies.