The 16th of November, twenty students, from the Japanese School of Madrid, from different grades of primary school and ESO came to ESAC. 

At the beginning of the visit we talked about the collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), for example with the future mission Bepicolombo, in which two satellites will be launch together to study Mercury. One of those satellites, “Mercury Planetary Orbiter” it’s constructed by ESA and the other one, “Mercury Magnetosphere Orbiter” it’s constructed by JAXA. We also talked about about the collaboration of those two agencies in the International Space Station where JAXA have the biggest single module of the station, the Kibo module. At Kibo multiple experiments are made, some of them in a platform outside the station exposed to vacuum and radiation.

Next, the students enjoy a scientific experience using the augmented reality sandbox to study topography. Modeling with their own hands different surface features with a color code projected according to the heights in real time. They also watch different 360º projections about several worlds of our solar system.

Finally, we made a tour around the installations of ESAC so they could learn about the scale models of important missions like Gaia, Rosetta, ISO, SoHO or Herschel. They also had a lot of interest on the 15m antenna present at ESAC. 

Thanks to all the voluntary students that translate to Japanese our explanations, they made this visit a total success.

We hope to see you again soon!