Aktuality

Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli opened the first Czech training and research centre for simulated space missions Little Moon City (LMC) Prague on 14 November 2023. As part of this festive event, Paolo Nespoli's lecture – "Human Space Endeavours: Today, Tomorrow, After-Tomorrow, After-after Tomorrow", in the auditorium of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague.

LMC aims to provide excellent facilities and conditions for scientific, university and commercial research. The whole concept is aimed at analogous space missions. From September 2023, the LMC will be located on the CTU campus in Prague 6, in front of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of CTU in Prague.

Little Moon City consists of the Deep Lab H03 Hydronaut Project deepwater station, including the control centre and its IT and project infrastructure. The software and data transfer is handled by 1^st Cloud Republic's Common Tongue communication and project system.

The project also involves the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague and the Department of Psychology of the Faculty of Arts of Palacký University in Olomouc. The connection of the LMC with the university world creates a unique combination of science and education with great commercial potential.

At the same time, other opportunities are opening up, for example, students and graduates of the newly opened study field of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague will be able to find employment in simulated space research.

In Little Moon City, which is already established in the scientific community thanks to the Hydronaut project, the Czech Republic has the opportunity to become a Central European leader in analogue missions. The aim is to gradually expand the portfolio of opportunities for scientific research. For this purpose, the LMC offers exceptional functional facilities and a professional team.

Deep Lab Station H03 is a fully transportable laboratory that enables both deep-sea and surface research. The station's living space for a crew of two to three is just 8m², making it the world's smallest habitat among similar ICE (Isolated Confined Extreme Environment) facilities. Such an extreme environment allows for cutting-edge psychological research, crew testing for Arctic stations, research on communication, physiology, biomedicine, etc.

Deep Lab H03 was transported to Prague from the flooded quarry in Jesenín, where it spent five years in the water. Three deep-sea scientific missions and three land-based missions with international crews have been carried out at the station.

We would like to thank the Planetum, the Department of Aerospace Engineering of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the CTU in Prague and especially Ambasciata d'Italia and Praga for the preparation and organization of Paolo Nespoli's visit to the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the CTU in Prague!