Slovenia from Space

In 2011, a project Slovenia from Space was launched at The Centre of Excellence SPACE-SI. We invited the Slovenian secondary schools to deal with environmentally oriented topics in local area with Space based solutions. The objective of the project was to introduce space topics to the general public and to highlight Slovenian effort for the integration into international research of space sciences and technologies as well.

At the end, 12 secondary schools have decided to participate in the project Slovenia from Space. Each of the secondary schools was addressing a different problem, related to the field of remote sensing, meteorology, astrophysics, micro- and nanosatellite technologies and materials (e.g. observation of the aurora phenomena, maritime security, detection of invasive plant species, bora wind observation, archaeology sites identifications, geology analysis, urban area change detection, …) This way, students had the opportunity to learn about things which are usually not included in school curriculum. Activities in student projects included analysis and validation of numerous archive imagery and written sources, laboratory and field work and presentations to local communities as well. Direct monitoring of the environmental processes and phenomena not only enables detailed understanding of the topic being discussed but also brings the experience of awareness of its conservation.

The most successful student project were presented at the special event at the Small Satellites Systems and Services Symposium (The 4S Symposium) which was held in Portorož, Slovenia from June 4-8, 2012, by ESA and CNES and hosted by SPACE-SI. This gave students an opportunity to meet leading experts from numerous research institutions and industry.

Student’s projects are presented here.