Space, Asteroids and Rovers with Scouts

Asteroid Foundation and FNEL Scouts & Guides teamed up to host the very first space day event for the scouts in Luxembourg. The morning was opened by Claude Meisch, Luxembourg Minister of Education and a former scout, together with Colleen Fiaschetti the Programme Director of Asteroid Foundation.

The scouts had a full day of exciting space related activities, exposing them to Luxembourg thriving space opportunities. The University of Luxembourg’s Interdisciplinary Center for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) hosted an activity where the Scouts could learn how even the smallest combustion can launch a tiny rocket using a matchstick and tinfoil. The University offers an Interdisciplinary Space Master Program that features technical and business lectures from experienced academic staff as well as external experts from the commercial space industry.

The scouts built their own lunar base using kinetic sand led by the European Space Resources Innovation Centre (ESRIC), a joint initiative of the Luxembourg Space Agency (LSA) and Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) with the European Space Agency (ESA) as a strategic partner. Unique of its kind, ESRIC aims to become the internationally recognised centre of expertise for scientific, technical, business and economic aspects related to the use of space resources for human and robotic exploration, as well as for a future in-space economy.

ispace, a private lunar robotic company based in Europe and Japan, brought one of their small moon rovers, which the scouts could operate and navigate on a tablet. Scouts were particularly surprised by the rovers light weight and small size. ispace has its first lunar mission launch planned for the winter of 2022.

Asteroid Foundation, organizers of Asteroid Day in Luxembourg and AsteroidDay.org, hosted an impact crater activity whereby scouts learned about impact psychics by throwing chocolate truffles into powdered sugar. They also discovered how asteroid impacts vary depending on their size, angle of impact and type of impact surface.

FNEL offered a fun space navigation challenge, where the participants would guide their team members through a space obstacle course. They also worked on a collage of all the things they would want to have on their perfect planet and what they would want to bring to Mars.

The Musée national d’histoire naturelle Luxembourg set up a planetarium where the scouts had a 360-degree immersive experience learning about the space and celestial bodies. The Museum is planning a robust meteorite and asteroid exhibit in 2023.

Cosmonaut Dorin Prunariu joined for an interview about his story of how he became the first ever Romanian in space. May 14th also marked Dorin’s 41st flight anniversary and was celebrated with cupcakes.

The day concluded with a ceremony where scouts earned a certificate signed by all of the participating organizations and an Asteroid Day badge. Check out all the photos from this event here.

This event marks the first ever Scouts and Asteroid Day partnership leading to the creation of the official Asteroid Day Scouting Toolkit, which is available for download on our event organiser page.

DOWNLOAD THE ASTEROID DAY SCOUTS TOOLKIT

 

This Program is co-funded by the European Union and was made possible thanks to Asteroid Foundation and Luxembourg Space Agency.