World Space Week 2024 was once again marked by massive scientific and educational events on space topics held on different continents and in different countries. Since 2000, it has been celebrated annually from October 4 to 10, although many events in its honor take place around the world outside of these dates.
This year is special: this international celebration of science and technology celebrates its 25th anniversary. Its celebration has united the space industry and the global community with the ideas of space exploration and innovation. All these years, the Space Week organizers have been striving to ensure international cooperation for a sustainable future on our planet.
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The program of this year's World Space Week focused on the theme “Space and Climate Change”. The theme was chosen by the Board of Directors of the Week. This year's theme focuses on the importance of space technologies in humanity's ongoing struggle against climate change, emphasizing the leading role of space research in improving our understanding of climate issues and managing the impact of climate change on life on Earth. Space Week was intended to be a platform for global cooperation that would bring together experts, students and enthusiasts from various fields to discuss and develop strategies for using space projects for environmental sustainability and climate change resilience. Its main goal is to draw the attention of people around the world to the problems of interaction between space technologies and climate science. The thematic events held this year demonstrated the importance of artificial satellites in monitoring environmental changes and identified strategies to mitigate the effects of climate change on Earth.
The activities of the organizers of the World Space Week 2024 events took various forms - from training seminars and interactive sessions to discussions and joint projects. As part of the WSW 2024 celebration, various events - webinars, exchanges of educational materials, and others - were held in more than 85 countries to present achievements in space exploration. Also, everyone had the opportunity to present and discuss their own achievements and opportunities in accordance with the proposed topics. They also had the opportunity to join the collective efforts to protect the environment and space exploration.
All events held during Space Week had an educational mission and contributed to the search for innovative environmental solutions. Highlights included the Space and Climate Change exhibition at the John F. Kennedy Space Center, a space hackathon organized by Kuwait Investment Company, whose winners received an all-expenses paid trip to the International Astronautical Congress 2025 in Australia, and a contest for girls aged 14-19 from around the world organized by the Cosmic Girls™ Foundation, where six finalists will be trained as astronauts and the winner will have the opportunity to make a suborbital space flight. In addition, the Challenger Center demonstrated the possibilities of virtual research to study changes in the Earth's environment using space satellites and presented its own Earth Odyssey project focused on the study of weather phenomena and environmental changes, etc.
The main center of the Space Week celebration in Ukraine was the Borys Paton State Polytechnic Museum at Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute (SPM). Thanks to the Internet, its employees were able to present the world with a program of their own festive events and join interesting events presented on the World Space Week website. One of them was the webinar “What is it like to live in space?” (held online on October 4), where astronaut Naoko Yamazaki shared her memories and answered numerous questions from the participants.
SPM also held a series of events under the general title “Space - Ukrainian Dimension”. They presented Ukrainian achievements in space exploration and the development of space devices. The key events took place in the Cosmonautics Hall of the Igor Sikorsky Aviation and Cosmonautics Department, where on October 4 a mini-exposition was set up to mark the 50th anniversary of the second space flight of the first Ukrainian cosmonaut and the sixth earthling to travel in space, Pavlo Romanovych Popovych (1930-2009).
The achievements of our famous countryman, as well as his tunic, biographical books, souvenirs and gifts were presented to the general public. Nowadays, the words of the cosmonaut's wishes for young people, imprinted on the spread of his book “Professions - Space Height,” are still touching: “Each profession has its own specific height. It is measured by its own parameters: in hectares of harvested bread, in the number of meters of woven fabrics, in the effectiveness of a new invention. But for you and me, the spiritual height of the profession is important. I wish you a cosmic rise in your creativity!” An interesting addition to the exposition was a thematic poster and a meaningful video presentation developed by museum scientists, which were shown both in the museum and on the World Wide Web (with the hashtags #WSW2024, #worldspaceweek2024).
It is a good tradition of the SPM museum staff to bring back the names of cosmonauts of Ukrainian origin from oblivion. This year, it was the fourth Ukrainian cosmonaut, Anatoliy Filippchenko. Therefore, from October 8 to 11, the museum hosted a presentation-story “Anatoliy Filipchenko - Space Conqueror from Ukraine” with numerous photo documents. To recap: A.V. Filipchenko was a pilot-cosmonaut of the second set of the Air Force, a participant in the world's first group flight of three spacecraft in 1969 (commander of the Soyuz-7 spacecraft). During this flight, it was planned to dock two spacecraft and transfer from one ship to another through outer space. In 1974, he made his second space flight. He checked the readiness of the modernized systems of the Soyuz spacecraft for the requirements of the 1975 joint flight under the Soviet-American Apollo-Soyuz experiment.
In addition, the halls of the SPM featured publications of the SpaceInform information and analytical center and a collection of Ukrainian space recorders, which were the first in the world to meet the strict requirements of resistance to shock, linear overloads and vibrations. By the way, it is thanks to this unique equipment, created by a team of talented Kyiv engineers and designers, that the world heard Gagarin's famous “Let's go!”.
On October 9, the SPM hosted a charity event for children in cooperation with Caritas Kyiv. It consisted of an excursion - a story about space based on the SPM exhibits; a story about the history of Space Week celebration; a quiz about space and climate change. The event ended with a creative ending: everyone created their own space drawing as a souvenir.
Space education events were also organized in Kyiv schools adjacent to the SPM for primary school students. The museum staff conducted storytelling talks and offered entertainment such as riddles and poems about space.
And on October 10, 2024, Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute hosted a roundtable discussion on the occasion of the 65th anniversary of the establishment of the Research Institute of Electromechanical Devices, organized by the State Polytechnic Museum. The event was dedicated to the presentation of the book by Oleksandr Provozin “Space Steps of the Kyiv Research Institute of Electromechanical Devices. The History of Ukrainian Space Recorders” (read more in the article below).
Thus, the events within the framework of the World Space Week 2024, organized and conducted by the SPM staff, once again showed that domestic achievements in the development of outer space allow us to assert that Ukraine has something to be proud of in this regard.