Autor: Cèlia Ventura

Hypatia opens a call until January 31, 2024, to select a multidisciplinary and intergenerational female-led crew to embark on a new mission in 2025. Candidates must present a research and/or outreach project related to space exploration, preferably focused on Mars or the Moon. The new crew will be announced in the spring of 2024 and will continue working towards Hypatia’s objectives of promoting research, outreach, and highlighting female role models to inspire scientific vocations. If you are passionate about space, want to become a female role model in the STE(A)M community, and are ready to participate in an unforgettable mission, do not hesitate to apply.

Hypatia I will be presenting the main results of the mission to the general public on Friday, June 16th. This special event is a collaborative effort with the Catalunya La Pedrera Foundation, one of the main partners of the Hypatia I mission, and a renowned organization which encourages people with a calling for science. The event will be held at the iconic building designed by the renowned modernist architect Antoni Gaudí, located in the heart of Barcelona. 

Hypatia’s post-mission event at La Pedrera will feature a keynote addressed by the crew members of Hypatia I crew, who will share the achievements and discoveries made during the analog mission, which took place from 16th to 29th of April at the analog station Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS), at the Utah desert, in the United States. In particular, they will share their firsthand experience of their time, and they will present –for the first time– images and data collected through their projects and experiments.

This event will allow the general public to better understand the experience of Hypatia I crew at the MDRS and will be especially targeted to young students, who will have a unique opportunity to learn more about the mission and about how to get involved with the Hypatia Mars Association. 

Catalunya La Pedrera Foundation is a private, independent foundation aimed at making a positive impact on people’s quality of life. With that mission, it works on the fields of society, sustainability and science, creating projects and opportunities for collaborative action.

The Hypatia Mars Association and the Generalitat de Catalunya, represented by the Department of Digital Policies, signed a collaboration agreement in the framework of the Catalan NewSpace Program.

The NewSpace Strategy of Catalonia deploys a program of specific actions to strengthen the ecosystem of the Catalan space sector. Hypatia is part of this sector, offering new role models to inspire the next generations, especially young girls and other under-represented groups in STEM careers.

There are several actions that are part of this collaboration agreement, such as the participation of Hypatia in the first meeting of the Digital Catalonia Alliance in 2021, the 4th STEM Conference on Space Education in 2022, and several outreach actions that will take place in 2023 and that will involve talking to teachers and students about the experiences of Hypatia I at the MDRS.

Hypatia is deeply thankful to Generalitat de Catalunya for its support. 

Hypatia and The Banco Sabadell Foundation signed a collaboration agreement to make the Hypatia I mission a reality in April 2023.

Hypatia’s values are aligned with the commitment of the Banco Sabadell Foundation to the progress and well-being of people, particularly its dedication to outreach, educational training, and research activities across a variety of fields.

In addition, one of the goals of the Foundation is to encourage and support the next generations.  The Hypatia Association shares the same aspiration, particularly with young girls and kids from other underrepresented communities in STEM.

The Banco Sabadell Foundation was founded in 1994 with the goal of stimulating excellence and promoting knowledge and culture. Since then, the Foundation has become a beacon of light in a variety of fields, including education, science, and culture.

The Hypatia Association is very thankful to the Banco Sabadell Foundation for supporting its work and the Hypatia I mission.

Crew Engineer Cesca Cufí collected “blobs” for her experiment at the Research Center of Animal Cognition (CRCA – CNRS) at the University Paul Sabatier, in Toulouse (France).

The “blob”, scientifically named Physarum polycephalum, is a unicellular species of myxomycete. This organism takes different forms depending on the environmental conditions and its life cycle. For example, without water and food, it takes the form of a sclerotia, a dry and compact mass capable of surviving in extreme conditions. It is precisely in this form that Hypatia has received some “blobs” for its mission to the MDRS! Check the HypaBlob instagram account to follow the progress of the experiments.

Audrey Dussutour is a biologist and the research director of the National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS). Her work aims to understand how distributed systems –whether colonies of ants or single-celled organisms– interact with their environment. With more than fifteen years of research on “blobs”, Audrey Dussutour is one of the world’s specialists in this organism. Her team showed that the “blob” was able to learn even though it was an organism without a nervous system, a discovery that completely changed the way we understand single-celled organisms and, in particular, the notion of intelligence.

In addition, since the beginning of her professional career, Audrey has contributed to the dissemination of her studies with numerous talks, workshops and publications. In 2021, during the Alpha mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) she collaborated with the National Center for Space Studies (CNES) to conduct an experiment with a “blob” –-called LU– in weightlessness aboard the International Space Station (ISS). In parallel, 5.000 school centers carried out the same experiment on Earth to evaluate the effects of gravity on this organism. The “blobs” that the Hypatia I crew will take to “Mars” are clones of LU, the “blob” that traveled to the ISS!

Hypatia I expresses its gratitude to the CNRS and to Audrey Dussutour for providing the “blob” samples, sharing their expertise, and offering a unique opportunity to get an in-depth experience on their research.