ALO pupils - a great adventure during the Ignis mission
The pupils of the Academic Secondary Comprehensive School of the Silesian University of Technology in Gliwice watched live broadcast from the launch of the space mission Ax-4 to the International Space Station, which is the first Polish technological and scientific mission IGNIS. It is a joint venture between the European Space Agency (ESA) and Axiom Space. On board the Falcon 9 rocket, belonging to SpaceX, which at 8.31 Polish time took off from Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, is a Polish astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski.
Together with Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski, the crew on the spaceship are Peggy Whitson - mission commander from the United States, Shubhanshu Shukla from India and Tibor Kapu from Hungary.
The launch was postponed several times, so most pupils watched this great moment with great impatience and fascination, counting down the last 10 seconds until the flight took off.
Among them were six winners of the competition organized by the Polish Space Agency (POLSA). The first place in the competition “Simple experiment – cosmic discovery” was taken by Aleksander Masztalski from class IB. There is a great chance that Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski will carry out his outstanding experiment during the space flight.
- My experiment is to present the possibility of using centrifugal force to create artificial gravity in space, - says Aleksander Masztalski, who explained to colleagues all the intricacies related to the subsequent stages of the flight just after the launch, during the broadcast. -I have a feeling that it is my adventure of the lifetime. During the launch I was overtaken by huge emotions, I waited a long time for it, because the launch was constantly postponed.
Aleksander was also a laureate of the second competition of the Polish Space Agency “Ask an Astronaut,” and together with him also Ewa Jankiewicz, Jakub Cebula and Witold Miratyński. The author of the award-winning question will ask it personally to Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski during a live call during his stay at the ISS.
In addition, Hanna Garczorz and Emilia Janoszka took third place in the competition “Simple experiment – cosmic discovery”.
- With their creativity, inquisitiveness and wide view of the Universe, they have proved that Polish youth have a huge scientific potential - explains Dr Małgorzata Szymaszek, a physics teacher at ALO in Gliwice, who inspired pupils to participate in the competition.
The entire educational and popularizing event organized in the CNT, related to watching the launch of the space mission Ax-4, was called “History is happening now – ALO students witness the Polish flight into space!”. Students also had the opportunity to see presentations and films related to the IGNIS mission and listen to the lecture “Polish cat in space,” delivered by Piotr Kuligowski from KP Labs. The Polish astronaut will conduct 13 scientific experiments as part of the Ignis mission. One of them is Leopard ISS, a compact data processing unit created by KP Labs in Gliwice, the task of which is to test and validate AI algorithms in space.
We will write more about the extraordinary adventure of the students of Academic Secondary Comprehensive School in Gliwice in the Bulletin of the Silesian University of Technology.
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