Sleepless in Dübendorf

13:34 is when things get serious: 60 students, researchers and space enthusiasts sit down in groups at their tables and get to work. They open their laptops, get talking and hammer away at their keyboards. Their task is to develop, within 30 hours, a concept for commercial exploitation on the Starlab, the space station that is set to travel in low Earth orbit from 2029. By this time, when the International Space Station (ISS) is no longer operating, space travel, which has previously been funded by states, will evolve to become a space economy driven by commercial enterprise. This calls for new ideas.

The Innovation Hub at the University of Zurich teamed up with various partners to organize the Starlab Space Mission Hackathon. This 30-hour ideas competition took place at Dübendorf Innovation Park. It provides a field of innovation that spans science, entrepreneurship and the space industry.

The event was very popular, with around 260 people expressing an interest in the 60 places available. The participants came from a variety of universities in Germany and Switzerland and from different disciplines, including sociology, mechanical engineering, biotechnology, psychology and game design. “Our first Space Mission Hackathon with Starlab demonstrates the power of interdisciplinary collaboration at its best. It’s precisely this kind of interdisciplinary innovation that we promote at the University of Zurich,” says Maria Olivares, the head of innovation at UZH.

The Starlab Space Mission Hackathon took place on 14 and 15 November 2025 at the Switzerland Innovation Park Zurich.

The students who took part were from the University of Stuttgart, the Technical University of Dresden, Julius-Maximilian University Würzburg, the Technical University of Berlin, the Technical University of Munich, the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich.

Alongside the University of Zurich and Starlab, the hackathon’s partners were the University of Stuttgart, the German National Student Space Flight Society, the German Space Agency, Aris, the Center for Space and Aviation Switzerland and Liechtenstein (CSA), the Switzerland Innovation Park Zurich, Yuri, FoodFor and ESA BIC Switzerland.

The 11 teams that were selected for the competition took part in four online training sessions in the weeks leading up to the hackathon, during which they began working on their idea for the project. The aim during the hackathon is then to turn the idea into a feasible mission concept that offers real economic potential. The participants receive support from experts from the startup scene or space industry who provide some brief input, as well as coaching and challenging the participants.

One of the experts is Ulrich Kuebler. “Starlab is designed as an open platform where companies can develop and manufacture high-tech materials and products, for example for new semiconductors or drugs, under conditions that are only possible in space,” says the senior manager of business development at Starlab. “We’re keen to motivate talented young people to think about possible uses today. As the ISS is phased out, there will be a generational shift in space travel and we want to get the next generation excited about our space station.”

Starlab is a joint venture that includes companies such as Airbus, Voyager Space, Mitsubishi, MDA Space and Space Application Services. At the end of 2024, it announced that it would be constructing its European site for commercial use at Dübendorf Innovation Park. A corresponding memorandum of understanding has been signed between Starlab and the Center for Space & Aviation Switzerland and Liechtenstein (CSA) under the direction of UZH professor Oliver Ullrich and the Switzerland Innovation Park Zurich (IPZ) Foundation.

The canton of Zurich is ideally placed to position itself as a key location for the new space economy. The University of Zurich, with all its innovation activities, especially in the life sciences, is in an excellent position to make the maximum contribution to this. UZH has a presence in Dübendorf with the Space Hub, whose international network makes it a driving force behind efforts to strengthen the emerging space industry in Zurich. “With its research in a wide range of different areas, UZH is the perfect organization to contribute expertise and provide impetus when changes happen in the economy and in society,” says Elisabeth Stark, Vice President Research at UZH and its representative on the CSA Board of Trustees. “As a founding partner of the Center for Space and Aviation, we’ve built a strong network with partners from universities, business and politics to promote innovations in aerospace.”

One example of this networking is the recent visit to Dübendorf by Winfried Kretschmann, Premier of Baden-Württemberg, and Petra Olschowski, Baden-Württemberg’s Minister of Science, Research and the Arts. The purpose of the visit was to strengthen cooperation in education and research and also identify potential opportunities for cooperation in space travel and aviation. The Starlab Space Mission Hackathon was also discussed at this meeting, and the University of Stuttgart was one of the event’s partners.

The 30 hours are now almost over at the hackathon in Dübendorf. The participants didn’t get much sleep during the night. The teams are adding the finishing touch to their presentations. They’ve developed concepts for conducting research into semiconductors under zero gravity conditions, metal 3D printing in space or for exploring the question of how astronauts could wash their clothes in space. Given how many great projects there were to choose from, it was not easy for the jury to make their decision, but ultimately they chose the winners (see box). The winning teams received prizes totaling CHF 9,000. The hackathon ended after 30 hours – but the level of enthusiasm for space travel did not. Many of the teams want to keep pursuing their ideas so they can turn them into reality.