The Last Week of Class
This week we had our final series of Daily Seminars and Interactive Workshops! The week was intended to begin with a Daily Seminar on ‘Space and Disaster Management’ delivered by DanLing Tang.
Unfortunately, due to some technical difficulties in relation to the sound, this seminar was cancelled and rescheduled for the following week. A prime example of the challenges associated with an online working environment!
Just like, every other week, the final week of Daily Seminars covered a wide range of topics including:
- ‘Management of Space Project’, delivered by Gongling Sun.
- ‘Introduction to Remote Sensing’, delivered by Su-Yin Tan.
- ‘Ethics: A Necessary Horizon for Space Activities’, delivered by Jacques Arnould.
- ‘NewSpace: The Emerging Commercial Space Industry’, delivered by Natalia Larrea Brito.
On top of the Daily Seminars, we have also been fortunate enough to have some fantastic Interactive Workshops this week. One was ‘Astronaut Field Geology & Astrobiology’, with Dr. Michaela Musilova.
We got the chance to learn a bit of Geology 101, how to observe rocks and draw field sample sketches. Michaela also spoke about mission site evaluation, and how Mars is observed to determine the optimal mission site for future expeditions.
We then had the opportunity to discover certain Mars geological surface features ourselves using Google Mars!
Another exciting workshop this week was, ‘Earth Observation Data Applications for Health Care Management and Services’ with Dr. Su-Yin Tan. In this workshop, we gained some experience and familiarity with geospatial visualisation software and web tools such as JMars.
Crew Talks!
This week also brought with it, the third and final installment of the Crew Talks! As always, the crew talks enlightened us all on some fascinating, and probably less well known topics. From Space Elevators to Off-Earth Farming, this final session was worth the wait!
As well as the regular weekly crew talks, there was also some exciting panel discussions this week, one of which was on ‘Diverse and Inclusive Space’.
A very interesting and insightful discussion with some of my fellow crew members on their experiences with diversity and inclusion. A fantastic idea thanks to Maria Gorchichko!
Mentorship
A lot of lasts this week as the program was beginning to come to an end. It was also the final week of the Mentorship sessions!
I was fortunate enough to have a mentorship session this week with Antonino Salmeri, the mentorship officer for ISP20. Not only did Antonino organise and facilitate every mentorship session throughout this program, but he has also had an amazing career so far! It was very enjoyable to hear about his experience and opinions on the legal side of space exploration!
I also had the opportunity to meet with Silvio Sandrone, who leads the Advanced Projects and Products business at Airbus, Jacob Cohen, Chief Scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, and Omar Hatamleh, Executive Director of the Space Studies Program at the International Space University and Chief Innovation Officer of Engineering at NASA.
The mentorship sessions have been a significant highlight of my time at ISU. It has been an extremely unique and rewarding opportunity to get to spend time with experts in the industry as well as ISU Alumni.
Some of the best mentorship sessions were the small ones, with only 3 or 4 of us in a call together. The smaller groups really allowed you to connect well with your mentor and to ask some of those burning questions that are always on our minds!
One week to go!
Even with so many aspects of the program coming to a close this week, it is hard to believe that there is only one week left to go! The draft of our Team Mission Report was submitted this week, with the final edits to be made next week.
A little surprise also arrived in the post this week…My Mission Pack arrived, with my Mission shirt and some goodies! Getting very excited for our ‘Re-Entry Sequence’ next week!
