Comic

The comic below is the result of a collaboration between the artist Johanne Holm and members of the SpaceMoss team. The comic attempts to describe the vision and methods of our project in Johanne's unique visual style.

SpaceMoss and the Space Man

SpaceMoss was present at the lecture given by recently returned Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen at the UCPH ball room, and our comics were a hit with the attending crowds. Everybody wanted one and we were trying desperately to keep up with demand.

One very cool moment, early on, was to hear the minister of science exclaim ’SpaceMoss! I’ve heard of you guys!’ upon receiving his copy!

The lecture was amazing, and we were all stoked to hear the first-hand account of Andreas’ trip to the ISS, a mere five days after he’d returned. There were lots of good questions from the audience, including questions from each attending member of SpaceMoss. Upon asking how long he thought it’d be before we saw a human on Mars, Andreas replied that it’s hard to tell, but if everybody got behind it, we could get there in maybe 15 years. ‘Technologically’, he said (and we’re paraphrasing from memory), ‘we’re closer to Mars now, than the Apollo was to the moon, when they first set out’.

After the lecture, there were refreshments and mingling, and one SpaceMoss’er stuck around long enough to be treated to a relaxed conversation with the man himself about which steps to take in order to be considered for astronaut training, given his current background. At that same conversation, Andreas took great interest in our project, wanting to know technical details and how far we’ve progressed.

All in all a very cool experience for all of us, and Andreas left with a smile - and a SpaceMoss comic tucked safe in his pocket.

In the media

Disclaimer:

Due to Danish press-laws, we are unable to deep-link to the articles themselves. Instead, every screenshot below links to the paper's main site (or the relevant section's site), from which a quick search for 'spacemoss' yields the relevant article

Dr.dk (Danish Broadcasting Coporation) article

DR (Danish Broadcasting Corporation) is Denmark’s oldest and largest news-enterprise, outside of printed media. The corporation was founded in 1925 as a public service organisation. DR is an independent, licence financed public institution comprising television, radio and online services.

Politiken

Politiken is a large national newspaper based in Copenhagen.

University Post article

This was the first article written about SpaceMoss. It was written by Elena Knuth-Pollok for the University Post which is the English-language media of the University of Copenhagen. It is editorially independent of the University of Copenhagen.

Jyllands Posten

Jyllands Posten is a large newspaper based in the Jutland region of Denmark.

Ekstra Bladet

Ekstra Bladet is large newspaper in Denmark, also based in Copenhagen.

MetroXpress

MetroXpress is the largest free newspaper in Denmark

Radio Nova

The danish radio-station Nova brought a ten minute interview with Christina Toldbo from Team Spacemoss. Lots of topics were covered, including our grand vision of making trips to Mars easier, how we propose to do it, and not least, the ethics involved.

Presentations
iGEM Giant Jamboree
Boston, U.S.A - September 24th-27th 2015

All our work will culminate in a grand presentation at the Giant Jamboree in Boston, U.S.A 24th of September. The competition will last until 28th of September, so all the teams have a chance to present. More than 260 teams from all over the world are joining the Giant Jamboree so the competetion is though. Fortunately there is no limit to how many teams can receive a gold medal.

SYNBIOSYS Ph.D. Summer School
Copenhagen, Denmark - August 27th 2015
SpaceMoss presented at the summer school for Ph.D's in Synthetic Biology: "From pro- to eukaryotic systems". Read more about the summer school here

Kick-off introduction at University of Copenhagen
Copenhagen, Denmark - August 21th 2015
Every year before university commences new students at Physics attend a kick-off week where they get to meet each other, hear about Physics and university life and get accustomed to their new environment. SpaceMoss dropped by to tell them how awesome it is to study Physics and tell them to keep their eyes open for opportunities like the iGEM competetion and cross-disciplinary work.

Human Exploration and Space Flight
Kiruna, Sweden - August 15th 2015
SpaceMoss attended the course Human Exploration and Space Flight in Kiruna (Northern Sweden). The course is about the historical development of human spaceflight, an understanding of the requirements to be met in order to send humans into space now and in the future. During the course we discussed our idea with respected scientists and even an astronaut, launched rocket SpaceMoss and held a presentation for the course participants. Read more about the course here

Christina presenting

Rocket SpaceMoss

Rocket SpaceMoss flying

Course participants

Nordic iGEM meetup
Uppsala, Sweden - Juli 25th 2015

Team presenting in Uppsala

Social Media

During the entire project we have been active on several social media platforms. With almost 600 followers on our facebook page and 200 on twitter we have shared our ideas, frustrations and not least our successes with a diverse group of people from all around the world.

Below you can see a screenshot of our facebook page and a selection of the pictures we have shared during the process.

#AMADEE15 Competition

We show our support and sent this Mars Pioneer photo with our best wishes to the AMADEE-15 Mars simulation mission. This social media campaign aimed to bring awareness about the AMADEE-15 mission and at the same time introduce the many people who are involved in Mars research and who make a contribution for humans to set foot on the red planet in the future. The competetion was a call for everyone who are dreaming about humans embarking on a trip towards Mars in the near future.

Although twitter has been a new platform for most of us (Twitter is not big in Denmark!) we have found that it has been a great way of sharing our progress. In particular, twitter has been invaluable for following companies and inspirational people who work with Space and/or Synthetic Biology every day, and in particular, other iGEM teams and the progress they've made.

Tweets by @SpaceMossUCPH