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Aqualunar heads to Montréal for Bootcamp
16 December 2024
The Aqualunar Challenge is a £1.2m international challenge prize focused on making human habitation in space possible by finding ways to purify water buried beneath the Moon’s surface. Could there be a cooler premise for a challenge prize?
The challenge launched in January 2024, and has two parallel tracks: in Canada, the Canadian Space Agency delivers the challenge in collaboration with Impact Canada, and in the UK, Challenge Works delivers the UK track on behalf of the UK Space Agency. In June 2024, eight Canadian semi-finalist and ten UK finalist teams were selected to move to the next stages. In the UK, the prize is being funded by the UK Space Agency’s International Bilateral Fund (IBF), which aims to support the UK space sector to work directly with international partners.
I’m Helen Spencer, hello! When I joined the Challenge Works team in October 2024, I was thrown straight into the planning of a highly anticipated and long-awaited three-day bootcamp in Montréal, as part of the Aqualunar Challenge. International collaboration is an integral part of this challenge, hence the bootcamp was designed to bring innovators from both the UK and Canadian tracks together, to foster connection and collaboration.
It was clear from planning discussions that there were some ambitious aims for the event. The vision was to bring together the eighteen teams in person, across three days, to support international cross-collaboration through a series of high-quality activities, networking opportunities and thought-provoking talks. For me, this was certainly a very exciting time to join the Challenge Works team and to be part of such an inspiring event.
Inspiration
The bootcamp took place at the Canadian Space Agency’s headquarters near Montréal, in Canada. In terms of venues, it doesn’t get more inspiring than being hosted where so much space technology and science have originated!
On day one, the teams (and us lucky organisers!) were treated to a tour of the Canadian Space Agency, getting a close-up look at Canadarm, Lunar rovers in development, and the Moon Base – showcasing technologies related to space health and food production, including the recent Deep Space Food Challenge Prize winning prototype.
The UK and Canadian challenge innovators were fortunate to be able to listen to the experiences of the incredibly inspiring Dr Frédéric Lemaire, winner of the CSA’s previous Deep Space Health Challenge. Frédéric shared his journey, and highlighted all the possibilities offered by challenges to develop breakthrough innovations for space, including those that also have the potential for tremendous impact here on earth. I, like many others, can’t wait for his TED Talk!
Competition and Collaboration
Being part of a cohort in an international challenge prize is certainly an interesting dynamic. Although teams are competing with each other, and there is obviously the desire to protect their inventions and intellectual property, we did see a great openness to learn together, experience new perspectives, and build a new network of space innovators.
With this in mind, the bootcamp was thoughtfully designed to allow for many international networking opportunities. Coffee breaks and social events, an external networking event with the Montréal innovator ecosystem and the, surprisingly highly-rated, “speed-dating” networking session between the Canadian and UK teams. Teams even got to play a Lunar Mission collaborative board game, developed by our partner Exotopic.
“I think that the networking has been brilliant,” shared Andrew McCulloch from Minima Designs (team CLiVE). “We’ve made some really good connections and hopefully some future collaborations. And, going for beers with an astronaut was pretty good, too!”
While UK and Canadian teams are part of separate tracks (and timings: Canada goes onto a third stage, while the UK will announce a winner in March 2025), they don’t directly compete. Fittingly, a Canada-UK Collaborative R&D funding opportunity, developed by Innovate UK and NRC IRAP, might have been just the incentive needed to find synergies, foster new cross-border collaborations and access additional funding.
Learning
It goes without saying that having super inspirational speakers on the agenda can go a long way to keep the learnings coming, the energy flowing, and to bring new perspectives across the three days.
Listening to two real-life astronauts, David Saint-Jacques and Meganne Christian, share their experiences and expertise was surely a highlight for all, and a way to awaken the childlike spirit in each of us. Not to mention the talk from Farah Alibay, a Canadian systems engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who shared her work on the InSight, Mars Cube One, and Mars 2020 missions. The agenda was packed with plenty more inspirational talks that excited and energised everyone in the room!
It’s worth highlighting that a significant number of the Aqualunar Challenge innovators don’t actually have a background in the water or space sector. How impressive to explore a brand new sector?! The varied agenda was designed with this in mind to help deepen and contextualise innovator’s knowledge in these fields.
“Seeing how it all comes together as one big system of how a lunar economy might develop, has really opened my eyes,” shares innovator Shaun Fletcher from the University of Glasgow (team LunaSonic). “As to how big the challenges are and what opportunities are there as well. So that’s been the key thing for me so far [in the bootcamp] and there’s much to look forward to as well!”
Looking forwards…
The UK innovators now have until the end of January 2025 to refine their designs and prototypes to convince the assessors and judges. Whether they are crowned winners or not, I hope that this bootcamp and the Aqualunar Challenge will have initiated new and long-lasting collaborations, created opportunities to enter new sectors, and convinced innovators of the impact they could have, beyond the results of the challenge. I’m certainly curious to see what happens next and how our innovators can take the “sci-fi” and make it a reality, in space and here on earth!
Thank you to everyone, on both the Canadian and UK sides, for their parts in making such a fantastic bootcamp happen. Not to mention, a special thanks to our hosts, the Canadian Space Agency, for making us all feel so welcome.
