Astro Pi — Now: A Permanent Indoctrination Pipeline

Short version: what began as a one-off “inspiration” stunt is now a standing recruitment pipeline with an annual cycle, two tracks, glossy merch-shots, and certificates telling kids exactly where the ISS “was” when their code allegedly ran. Cute. Industrial-scale, though.

What it is today (their words, not ours)

  • Always-on annual cycle. Mission Space Lab says submissions for 2024/25 closed 24 Feb 2025, and the 2025/26 round opens September 2025.
  • Two-track funnel. Homepage pushes you to Choose your mission:
    • Mission Zero (badges: “1 hour”, “Age under 19”) — send a personalised image to “astronauts on the ISS”.
    • Mission Space Lab (badges: “4 months”, “Age under 19”) — “run your program on board the ISS”.
      The page literally headlines this choice.
  • Marketing hook: “Giving young people the chance to run their computer programs in space” and to conduct “scientific investigations in space” on Raspberry Pis “on board the International Space Station.” (That’s the homepage’s own meta/description copy.)
  • Certificates with ISS coordinates/time. Mission Zero promises every eligible entry runs “for up to 30 seconds” and gets a certificate recording start/end time and the position of the ISS. Timeline: launch 16 Sep 2024, close 24 Mar 2025, runs May 2025, certificates June 2025.
  • Mission-control theatre. For Space Lab, submissions are assessed and awarded “flight status”, deployed April–May 2025, then teams get data + certificate May–June 2025.
  • Pi hardware sleight of hand. They say outright the Astro Pi computers are not provided; you can test on your own Pi. The “space” happens off-stage.
  • Authority halo. Co-branded everywhere with ESA and the Raspberry Pi Foundation logos.

Spotter’s guide to the manipulation

  • On-ramp → loyalty loop. Mission Zero (one hour, dopamine hit, certificate) feeds into Space Lab (months-long identity binding). Badges and timelines make it feel “official”.
  • Certificate as sacrament. The “ISS position” line item is the catechism footnote — a cartouche to seal belief.
  • Brand laundering. Linux + Raspberry Pi credibility fronts the narrative so the belief piggybacks the tech.
  • Mission Control cosplay. “Flight status,” “deploy,” “data from the ISS”… all the language of spaceflight, none of the transparency.

Teacher/mentor sanity checks (if you must run it)

  • Ask to see continuous, uncut telemetry + video for your team’s run, not a sizzle reel.
  • Request a local reproducibility path: if the “experiment” is genuine science, you should be able to replicate all core effects without invoking an orbiting set-piece.
  • Demand the raw data provenance (timestamps, clock source, uplink path), not just a certificate with coordinates.

Our position (same as before)

We love Linux. We love Pi. We loathe their names being used as camouflage for belief-imprinting. If you took part: it’s not your fault. They engineered the funnel. Step back, breathe, and follow the data — not the badges.

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