The first ESA_Lab Demonstrator Project IGLUNA offered students opportunities to participate in an international, collaborative project on a visionary space topic: A Habitat in Ice.

IGLUNA is aimed at supporting and accelerating the ESA_Lab@ initiative. The Swiss Space Center coordinates IGLUNA project and leads the main systems engineering activities, coaches the students teams, organises the events, and communicates to the general public. IGLUNA is emulating European students and foster exchange through an international, interdisciplinary, and collaborative platform for demonstration of space technologies. During the project, university students apply their knowledge to solve a technical challenge, to sustain life in an extreme environment, increasing in parallel the maturity of technologies relevant to the space domain.

In one year, 20 student teams from various disciplines gathered their knowledge to design a habitat potentially suitable for an extreme environment, such as the Moon. More than 150 students from 9 European countries designed their prototypes during the autumn semester 2018 and built their modules in the spring semester 2019.

The IGLUNA is an exciting opportunity for students interested in space exploration. In this truly international, interdisciplinary, and collaborative project, the students can present and test their solutions to some of the real challenges of the space missions.

It has been a privilege to be one of the IGLUNA Experts for the 2019/2020 campaign and I am looking forward to working with the 2020/2021 campaign teams.