What the Astro Pi Challenge is
A real space science programme, run every year by the European Space Agency and the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
There are two Raspberry Pi computers on board the International Space Station, in special aluminium flight cases. They are called Astro Pi Mark II, and they carry the same sensors and camera a school could buy: a thermometer, a humidity sensor, a magnetometer, a gyroscope, an accelerometer and a colour sensor, plus a camera pointed out of the window at the Earth.
Every year, young people across Europe write programs for them. The programs are checked, then loaded onto the computers and run in orbit. The results come back to the young people who wrote them.
It is completely free to enter, and it is not a competition against other children — every valid entry flies.
Nothing needs to be bought. Everything in the first two thirds of the programme runs in an ordinary web browser. No Raspberry Pi, no equipment and no software is needed at home.
The two missions
Every member does both. The first is short and certain; the second is the ambitious one.
Mission Zero
Written in September, submitted early OctoberAbout an hour's work, in a browser. Members write a short program that reads the temperature or colour on board and displays a picture and a message on the Astro Pi's small screen for the astronauts to see.
Every valid entry runs on the Space Station for around 30 seconds. Afterwards each young person receives a certificate signed by an ESA astronaut, showing the exact date, time and place on Earth the ISS was passing over when their program ran.
Mission Space Lab
Built over the winter, submitted JanuaryThe serious one. In teams of two to six, members design a real scientific investigation, then write a Python program that runs for up to ten minutes in orbit — reading the sensors, or photographing the Earth, and recording what it finds.
Our teams will work on calculating the Space Station's speed from two photographs taken moments apart, and on measuring plant health on the ground using infrared light. The data comes back to them in the summer to analyse.
Everything is tested on the ground first. The Astro Pi Replay Tool feeds real photographs and sensor readings from previous flights into the members' programs, so they can see their code working long before anything is submitted.
What your child will actually do
Two strands, both weekly in term time from September to March. The club builds a space mission together in Minecraft; the one-to-one lesson is where the coding happens, one Scratch or Python project a week. Nobody is left behind — the first lessons are Scratch, and every member has flown something by October.
- Autumn term — ground school. In club, the mission is planned and a launch vehicle is built in Minecraft. In lessons, space games in Scratch to start, then the first lines of real Python: a rocket animation, a model of the solar system, and finding the Space Station's live position on a map. Mission Zero is written and submitted in this block.
- Winter — flight build. The club becomes Mission Space Lab teams, because that entry needs two to six people. Each week the lesson teaches the Python the team needs next: reading the sensors, saving data to a file, taking photographs, all against the Replay Tool. The hardest and best of them is working out how fast the Space Station is travelling from two of its own photographs. The answer to check against is 7.66 kilometres per second.
- Spring — destination. The club goes back to the Minecraft world and finishes the build for the showcase. Portfolios are completed and signed off, and the members who want to go further work with real hardware in their lessons: a Sense HAT, LEDs on a breadboard, and an infrared camera doing on the ground exactly what the Astro Pi does in orbit.
The programme finishes with a showcase on Wednesday 24 March 2027, where members present their investigations to parents. Certificates and flight data arrive over the following weeks.
What we need from you
One consent, and it is the only thing that leaves Arcadia.
- Your permission to register your child. To enter, we have to give the Raspberry Pi Foundation your child's name and age, and which team they are in. Nothing else — no address, no school, no contact details, no information about how they learn.
- That is the whole disclosure. The programs themselves contain no personal information, and we check every one before it is submitted.
- Your consent record is kept off this website, on paper and in Cognito Coding's own files, exactly as our privacy notice describes.
- You can say no. A member who is not registered still does every session, still writes the same programs, and still tests them against real Space Station data. They simply do not appear on an entry.
Your child must be aged 19 or under and in full-time education, and the United Kingdom is an eligible country — it is a member state of the European Space Agency.
Read how we handle information about your child in our privacy notice and safeguarding policy. The consent form is here: consent form.
Dates to know
- 1Wednesday 16 September 2026 — the programme starts. Sessions run weekly on Wednesdays, in term time only.
- 2Wednesday 7 October 2026 — Mission Zero submitted. Every member's program is queued to fly.
- 3Wednesday 20 January 2027 — Mission Space Lab submitted, a month ahead of the official deadline of 22 February.
- 4Wednesday 24 March 2027 — showcase evening, in the last week of the spring term. Members present their investigations.
- 5April to June 2027 — the programs run on the Space Station and the results come back.
Read it from the source
These are the official pages, run by the European Space Agency and the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Nothing on this page replaces them.
Mission Space Lab
The full challenge, with its rulebook and eligibility criteria.
Mission Space Lab Who can enterThe projects themselves
Every space project we work through is free and public. You are very welcome to try them at home.
Space projectsRaspberry Pi Foundation privacy
How the Foundation handles the registration details we pass to them.
Their privacy policyQuestions about any of this? Speak to your tutor — happy to go through it properly.
Our policies