SPACE ROCKS AT THE 2022 ESA OPEN DAY

When Dominique Tipper, Lilly Palmer, Izzie Clarke and more joined us on the Space Rock stage for the 2022 ESA Open Day!

In a spectacular return to our live events programme, Space Rocks hosted our very own stage at the NL Space Campus in Noordwijk to coincide with ESA’s Open Day. As part of the very first edition of The Space Week in Noordwijk, the event was organised by NL Space Campus, in strong collaboration with Leiden 2022 The European City of Science and ESA/ESTEC.

Compered by science journalist and presenter par excellence Izzie Clarke, the Space Rocks stage featured a unique mix of the best and brightest from the worlds of art, music, science, and engineering. We were joined by Dominique Tipper, star of The Expanse, who discussed humanity’s future among the stars. Techno artist Lilly Palmer presented an exclusive premier of her collaborative video A New Life produced in association with ESA and filmed at ESTEC’s Compact Payload Test Range where spacecraft, probes and satellites are tested before being launched into space.

Bestselling author of Apollo Remastered, Andy Saunders told us all about his fantastic book and X-ray astronomer Erik Kuulkers, and ESA lunar systems engineer Nadine Boersma discussed our future on the Moon and what we can still learn from Apollo. Solar Orbiter mission scientists Olivier Witasse & Laura Hayes shared the latest on ESA’s thrilling mission to the Sun, and an update on what mysteries the groundbreaking JUICE mission has already revealed.

We were also delighted to welcome ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer as well as music from The Kate Moore Quintet. Space Rocks co-founders Alexander Milas and Mark McCaughrean were of course on hand throughout the day, with Mark presenting a fascinating presentation on all the latest from Webb.

See our video of the day’s events below!