A Weekend at OrionHack

Last month I spent two days in London at a space Hackathon. Here is what we achieved.

I regularly write about space technology, both here and on Twitter (the new name isn’t doing it for me), but some times its important to go beyond just talking and get hands on. Most of the professional work I do these days is writing software, but I have in the past worked on cubesat and high altitude balloon projects, and so when I heard about a two day space-themed hackathon in London hosted by Matvey Boguslavskiy I decided to take the opportunity to get involved and refresh my skills.

The attendees were from a variety of backgrounds, mostly engineering students of some kind although often not studying subjects directly related to space technology. This was part of the ‘interdisciplinary’ theme, designed to bring in more varied skills. I had originally been invited to give a talk at the beginning, which I did, but I figured that I should also get directly involved on one of the teams.