This autumn, a team of students from NTNU participated in a challenge organized by the European Space Agency (ESA). The competition, named the "Computer-in-a-room-challenge" (https://esoc.esa.int/content/take-part-esa-computer-room-challenge), involved controlling a computer connected to a camera system and utilizing limited resources and energy in the best possible way. ESA aimed this competition specifically at computer science and data students. The aim was to get new input on how we can operate and control satellites orbiting the Earth. Satellites behave in the same way as the computer in the competition, we only have communication access to them when they are over a ground station, and we must use resources wisely.

The Norwegian finalists: (from left: Aksel Lunde Aase, Shayan Alinejad, Đorđe Veljković and jury chairman Alessandro Ercolani from ESA. Foto: Kim Nergaard, ESA.             

The team contributions were evaluated on, among other things, the level of autonomy in the solution, code quality, and documentation. The NTNU team participated in the final, which was held at ESA's operations center (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany. After tough competition and careful evaluation, it was decided that the NTNU team shared first place with a team from the Italian university Ca' Foscari, Venice.

The first prize is that the teams now design will an experiment based on their contributions that will be tested on OPS-SAT, an ESA satellite specifically developed to test new concepts. The team consisted of Aksel Lunde Aase, Shayan Alinejad, and Đorđe Veljković, students at IDI, IIK, and ITK.

NTNU is a part of the ESA academic network with our ESA_Labs@NTNU, which has facilitated the participation in this competition.