Zorana brought home a Gold medal from Germany!
Our scholar Zorana Štaka participated at Space Station Design Workshop, which was held from July 21 to July 27 at Institute of Space Systems at University of Stuttgart, Germany, where students and young professionals from all disciplines and nationalities had the opportunity to be a part of intensive 7 day study about the space but also to present their ideas and solutions. Here we report Zorana’s experience in Stuttgart.
“Overcoming impossible engineering challenges and doing that in a short period of 7 days with a multidisciplinary and international team? Sounds exciting and interesting. Trust me, it was indeed. Last week I had a privilege to be part of the Space Station Design Workshop in Stuttgart.
Our one-week journey started on Sunday. We had to present anything about the universe we find interesting. My presentation was titled “The fate of the universe”, and I discussed the final destiny of our universe. Will our universe continue expanding forever and have a destiny of Big Rip or Big Freeze, or it will continue expanding forever, but at a continually decelerating rate, or will it be the opposite of the Big Bang - the Big Crunch where all universe starts to contract until everything collapses to the single point. As it turns out our universe is flat (this doesn't mean Earth is flat! - it just means we use Euclidean geometry in the universe).
On Monday after a few very interesting lectures we finally found out the mission and our teammates. Our mission was very ambitious. We had to plan a human mission to the atmosphere of Venus with tasks of scientific exploration of Venus. If Mars seems hard to you, think of 93 Bar - pressure at the surface of Venus, of perhaps sulfuric acid in the atmosphere which is mostly carbon-dioxide. If you and your equipment were able to survive all of that, there are winds in the Venusian atmosphere at the speed of 355 km/h. Earth's fastest tornado seems like a child play, compared to the Venus. And we could think of these challenges only if we find a way to get our astronauts somehow (at the right speed and angle) in the dense Venusian atmosphere, without killing them.
This was quite a challenge but being able to talk to experts in all areas and having the hard-working team we managed to finish our project in record time.
Finally, my team was awarded the gold medal for amazing work and a well delivered final presentation. Thanks to my teammates I learned a lot about space, space travel, working in a team, and about other teammates as well.”
We at BH Futures Foundation are very proud of Zorana’s success and outstanding performance in Stuttgart. She proved once more how talented, inspired and motivated youth in Bosnia and Herzegovina can be. Well done, Zorana!