The Portuguese Space Agency has announced that the third edition of its Astronaut for a Day initiative has received a total of 634 applications.
Launched in 2022, the Astronaut for a Day initiative is aimed at primary and secondary school students aged between 14 and 18. At the end of the selection process, 30 finalists are chosen to experience weightlessness during a parabolic flight.
“With Astronaut for a Day, we also try to overcome the idea that space is something distant, accessible to only a few,” explained Education and Science programs manager at the Portuguese Space Agency Marta Gonçalves during the launch of the initiative’s fourth edition.
Interest in the initiative has continued to grow. The second edition received a total of 552 applications, which was a 20% increase from the inaugural year. The 2024 edition received 632 applications, with 48 percent of the applicants being female.
The applicants will now undergo a selection process that replicates what a candidate applying to be a European Space Agency astronaut would experience. A total of 250 candidates will be selected for the initiative’s second phase, during which their memory, speed, and spatial reasoning skills will be tested. This will then be followed by a physical aptitude test, with 100 candidates taking part in this third phase. Finally, 50 students will be called for an interview that will allow a panel of judges to select the 30 finalists who will board a parabolic flight on 29 September from Air Base No. 11 in Beja, Portugal.
In addition to the Portuguese Space Agency, the Astronaut for a Day intuitive includes contributions from the Portuguese Air Force, the Municipality of Beja, Ciência Viva, the Faculty of Human Kinetics of the University of Lisbon, and the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of the University of Porto.
