In 2015, as part of British astronaut Tim Peake’s Principia mission, the Raspberry Pi Foundation worked with the UK and European Space Agencies to send two Raspberry Pi computers to the International Space Station. Since then, these Astro Pis have run thousands of programs written by young people across Europe as part of the annual European Astro Pi Challenge (EAPC)

In 2021, after over two years of work, Space-X 24 took two new Astro Pis to the Space Station, where they have now been installed and, by the time EMF happens, will have been used to run even more exciting experiments designed by young people.

This talk will reveal behind-the-scenes details of the design, development and flight certification processes, including the manufacture of the space-grade aluminium flight cases, EMC testing, astronaut-friendly software engineering, and the issues that almost stopped the project.

I’ll also describe some of the amazing experiments that have been designed and run by young people who take part in this year’s EAPC, and look at how they’ve used the new hardware including the IR sensitive camera and Machine learning Accelerator dongle. This will include photos taken as part of the Earth Observation experiments.

There will be Astro Pi ground units (both Mark I and Mark II) on display