I’ve just completed a couple of days of judging, as part of my membership of the Academic Committee, some fantastic space mission proposals from student groups across top national and international universities. This was part of the 2024 International Space Science and Scientific Payload Competition. This prestigious event was held in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region for the first time over two days on Aug 12-13 at the beautiful Chinese University of Hong Kong campus.
The conference byline was “a shared space for a shared future” — truly a lofty aspirational goal, both literally and figuratively!
The opening ceremony included impressive speeches from top leaders. I was particularly struck by the speech from Olivier Contant, executive director of the International Academy of Astronautics, who came from Switzerland for the event. He stressed the value of international collaboration to all the international and national student groups present and the key importance of English as the global communication medium for science (and, of course, also for trade, diplomacy and more). It is clear the younger generation, represented by their impressive teams, are already aware of this if their English fluency is anything to go by. The international camaraderie and unmistakable buzz of excitement across the event was as energizing as it was pleasurable to witness. Other speakers discussed the concept of Hong Kong as a gateway to East-West interaction and opportunity, as well as the roles space science and technology can play. Again, this stressed the vital, positive role our city could have during increasing geopolitical tensions — barriers often fall when we meet people across an event of mutual interest and opportunity such as a space event.
Student teams from middle-school and university cohorts had to pass through preliminary rounds to get selected to go to the finals of the competition, held in person here in Hong Kong.
About 250 participants in typically groups of five to seven students each got to present their final pitches live from a total application pool of dozens of teams and more than 1,500 students. The 20 finalists in the middle-school cohort had their single judging team. There were also two groups of half a dozen judges across the two university group project tracks, one for the creative design of space experiments and one for space payload concepts. These two groups of finalists comprised 15 university interdisciplinary teams each of young STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) students. They were distributed among teams from Mexico, Egypt, Poland, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Russia and Pakistan, as well as teams from the Chinese mainland and five from HKSAR universities. This included a team from my own University of Hong Kong lab for space research.
I did not get to judge that team, though they did win a bronze medal and a 10,000-yuan ($1,400) reward. This was for a project looking at lasers and magnets as mechanisms to tackle the serious issues of space debris infecting low-Earth orbit. That is an issue to revisit another time, given that the HKSAR will be hosting an important international conference on that topic in early December at HKU. The gold-medal-winning team was awarded 150,000 yuan. These generous, pecuniary rewards strongly incentivize teams to participate worldwide.
I was seriously impressed by the quality of most of the concepts and prototypes presented. It was clear that these young teams were conducting fundamental research, often mentored by outstanding scientists within their host universities. All teams presented excellent slide decks, including animation and video, with several bringing in actual hardware prototypes of their ideas. It was hard to pick the best from such an excellent set of projects, some of which deserve to go into space.
It was also great to catch up at the event with Professor Deng Yulin, the academician and inspiration behind the entire program, and several colleagues and friends from key mainland groups. These included the Asia-Pacific Space Cooperation Organization, based in Beijing, and Wang Yiran and Jiang Jun, senior leaders from the Chinese Society of Astronautics, with whom we already have decent links. It was also great to meet Olivier Contant again and the irrepressible Professor Bernard Foing, a Frenchman with the European Space Agency’s lunar exploration team. Side discussions among the judges, the 40 or so top national and international representatives, and special guests were a useful add-on to the event. They came from some of the most important aerospace organizations, companies, and institutes from the Chinese mainland and overseas. I secured a likely European provider for a key “lidar” package we want to put onto a proposed HKU small lunar orbit satellite from speaking to Contant.
I believe many more of these kinds of academic-related events can be held in Hong Kong, given our prowess as a mini-superpower in tertiary education. Having five universities in the global top 100 — a feat virtually no other global city can match —makes us a strong magnet for academic meetings across the board, although, of course, for me, science gatherings are top!
The author is director of the University of Hong Kong’s Laboratory for Space Research.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
