Day 3 – Monday, July 11

Monday we were introduced to the 3 Team Projects (TP’s). The TP’s will be our main focus for the last 3 weeks of our summer together. For now, we just have a few sessions focused on these projects per week. The TP deliverables are a 100-page report and a team presentation. The report will then be presented at conferences. The 3 abstracts have already been accepted at the International Astronautical Conference in Cape Town, South Africa this fall. Each team will be about 40 students representing many countries (there are 30 countries here, so the number of countries on each team will vary). Considering language barriers, differing styles of accomplishing work and organizing material, etc., this will be a very challenging project and a fantastic learning experience.

Project 1 is called “Fresh Water.” This team will delve into various ways that space technologies can be applied to understanding and managing the Earth’s limited supply of fresh water. Project 2 is called “Human-Robotic Cooperation.” This team will create a mission to Mars and propose an optimal mix of humans and robots. Project 3 is called “Small Satellite Application” and they will be creating a list of recommendations for the United Nations about building and maintaining small satellites. This guidebook will also list best practices on technical issues, cost-benefit and program / project management, space debris protection and other relevant issues.

After our introduction to the 3 TP’s we were honored to have Bob Richards, co-Founder of ISU, talk to us about “why you are here” and introduce us to ISU’s operating principles called the “3 i's” which are: interdisciplinary, international, intercultural. Then we had our pinning ceremony. Bob and Angie Buckley, SSP11 Director, pinned each of us with an ISU pin that has been flown in parabolic flight at zero-g, martian gravity, and lunar gravity.

Later that night, we all changed into our professional clothes and went to a very old TU Graz building for our class picture. I only have pictures of all the girls and Team USA because only the professional photographer was taking the picture of everybody. But hopefully we'll get a digital copy of that soon.

After the class picture we were bussed to the opening ceremony which was in a beautiful old building called Alte Universität Graz. We didn’t exactly know what was going to happen at the ceremony – it was a surprise. So, we sat in a holding room until all the VIP’s had been seated. We were the “stars of the show” and were announced by country. We had a number of distinguished speakers including the representative of the Mayor of Graz, the Governor of Styria, John Logsdon, Bob Richards, and Michael Simpson, President of ISU. We also were entertained by an Austrian dance troupe named Osterwitzer Schuhplattler. Then we had a delicious reception with lots of interesting local food like mushrooms, cheese dumplings filled with strawberry jelly, chocolate mousse, etc.

The opening day was great! I am ready to get going!