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Europe’s finalists in the Space Lab challenge will join astronauts, scientists and Google managers at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne on 16 May to discuss their experiment ideas and call ESA astronaut André Kuipers on the International Space Station.

In October, ESA jointly launched the YouTube Space Lab, an exciting venture by YouTube, NASA, Japan’s JAXA space agency, Space Adventures and Lenovo to challenge students around the world to design a science experiment for the International Space Station.

The competition attracted thousands of proposals by teams and individuals from over 80 countries. The www.youtube.com/spacelabweb portal was heavily promoted by the partners and recorded an impressive 51 million views.

A panel of prestigious scientists, astronauts and teachers, including astronauts Frank De Winne, Samantha Cristoforetti and Timothy Peake of ESA, Leland Melvin of NASA, Akihiko Hoshide of JAXA, Chris Hadfield of the Canadian Space Agency and Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté, judged the entries, including input from the YouTube community.  
Exclusive prize: EAC visit and Station call

In addition to the global winners presented in Washington DC, USA, in March, ESA has invited the 21 regional finalists from Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) to the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) in Cologne, Germany, to talk about their experiments directly with astronauts, followed by a hands-on tour of Europe’s astronaut training facilities.

To make the visit even more memorable, at around 14:00 GMT (16:00 CEST), André Kuipers will call live from orbit for an exclusive talk with the students.

It will be an important occasion to present the Space Lab campaign to Europe’s media and for the students to describe their projects. Among them will be the global finalists Laura Calvo und María Vilas from Spain and Simon Kopf from Germany.

The EMEA wrap-up event of YouTube Space Lab will include ESA astronauts Frank De Winne and Reinhold Ewald. The creator of the overall competition, Zahaan Bharmal, Head of Marketing Operations EMEA/Google, will also be on stage.

“The YouTube Space Lab campaign has proven to be an excellent, creative way of reaching out to future generations of scientists, on the ground and in orbit,” notes Thomas Reiter, ESA’s Director for Human Spaceflight and Operations.