Winter Satellite Workshop 2025
After just two weeks in Toulouse after the Christmas holidays, I visited Helsinki (again!) last week. Just like last year, I was there to take part in the ever-growing Winter Satellite Workshop conference.
The conference runs from Tuesday to Thursday, gathering the whos-who of the Northern European space sector to one place to discuss new science, products and even some politics.
Me and Benjamin presented the stratospheric balloon course we're taking in Toulouse, notable for the fact that our students payloads are launched by CNES (the French space agency) on dedicated balloons, something they don't do with any other university to our knowledge. The talk, given in an education session, garnered some interest from the small audience of educators and fellow students, namely because of the CNES access the course gets but also because of the wide collaboration between various European space universities within the course.
The main reason we were in Helsinki was to organize the SG[Nordic-Baltic] networking event for students and young professionals working in the field of space. This side event took place on Monday before the main conference, and gathered a diverse group of nearly 100 people to listen to talks from organizations like Isar Aerospace (sometimes praised as "Europe's SpaceX") and Kuva Space (a big Finnish Earth observation startup). In the afternoon some of our partner companies hosted hackathons, where the participants could work on problems the companies are facing, simultaneously getting to know the company and fellow participants better.
The event was a huge success and in itself totally worth making the trip to Helsinki. I was responsible for logistics (spaces, catering, gift bags, etc.), so I couldn't participate in the actual day program that much, but it was a cool experience organizing this kind of a big event for the first time and seeing people enjoy themselves after all the hard work we put in organizing it. Hopefully we get to do it again next year!
After a weekend chilling in Helsinki, I'm back in Toulouse ready for the last few weeks of courses here, after which we start our internships. I still haven't locked in my internship position, so that's priority number one right now. After all, it would be nice to know where I'll be spending the next few months 😅 Safe to say it's not going to be Toulouse, since unfortunately all us international students have had a really difficult time finding internships here due to the language barrier. It's looking like I'll be moving to Germany in April, but nothing's confirmed yet!