Portugal news - Two Portuguese Space institutions have won the PROSSE 2024 competition to work on ESA experiments for their scientific projects in the area of space exploration in Portugal.
The Institute of Systems and Robotics at the Instituto Superior Técnico of the University of Lisbon and the LIBPhys Laboratory, that is formed by researchers from NOVA University are the two winners of the PROSSE 2024 competition.
The PROSSE initiative for Science in Space Exploration is promoted by the Portuguese Space Agency and the two winning projects will now be contracted to work with the European Space Agency's PRODEX team.
Here are the 2 Portuguese Space projects that won the PROSSE 2024 competition:
1) The UNFORESEEN project
The UNFORESEEN project by the Institute of Systems and Robotics at IST Lisbon aims to use unsupervised deep learning techniques to detect craters on the surface of Mars, thus overcoming the limitations of current supervised models.
2) The ASTROPOWER project
The ASTROPOWER project, developed by LIBPhys (Laboratory of Instrumentation, Biomedical Engineering and Radiation Physics), focuses on mitigating the loss of muscle power in astronauts through Acoustic Biofeedback techniques for myotatic tension, which could also be applied to combat muscle loss related to population aging.