Agnirva Space Premier League - Expedition #30724: Coding in Orbit: How Students Ran Raspberry Pi Experiments on the ISS

What happens when you give students access to a space-bound Raspberry Pi computer aboard the International Space Station? The European AstroPi Challenge 2018-19 answered that question with creativity, science, and some truly out-of-this-world coding.

Led by David Honess of the European Space Agency, in collaboration with the Raspberry Pi Foundation, this educational experiment allowed students from across Europe to write code that would run on AstroPis—specially modified Raspberry Pi computers installed on the ISS.

Students from Expedition 59/60 participated by submitting code to perform science experiments, control sensors, and even capture images from orbit. The goal? Inspire young minds to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).

What’s amazing about the AstroPi Challenge is how accessible it made space experimentation. Students didn’t need rockets or labs—just a computer, some Python programming skills, and a scientific question to explore.

Projects included monitoring air quality, logging humidity and temperature, tracking light levels, and taking photographs of Earth. The best submissions were uploaded and executed on the real AstroPis aboard the ISS, with astronauts overseeing the process.

This program not only promoted STEM education but also gave students a taste of real-world space science. It helped them develop teamwork, coding, and analytical thinking skills.

From classrooms to orbit, the AstroPi Challenge proves that the sky is not the limit—it’s just the beginning. Future engineers and scientists are already shaping space research, one line of code at a time.

Ready to write the next great experiment?

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