Here we introduce you to some former students who spent their free time at the International Space Education Institute (ISEI) in Leipzig and travelled the world with their teams. All of them passed their exams and graduated during this time, to which the acquired experience, skills and knowledge contributed significantly. At that time, no one could have imagined what they would become today, see for yourself. The same can happen to you. The future is not yet written, and anything is possible - if you are enthusiastic and willing to put in the effort.
Katya is from Moscow and has participated in the NASA Rover Challenge as a pilot several times since 2014. She designed a model of an interstellar spacecraft at the age of 11. At NASA, she was the youngest rover pilot at the age of 13 and won many titles between the years 2014-18, becoming famous on TV in her home country of Russia. In Leipzig, she took part in summer workshops and holiday camps and gave lectures in English at Leipzig high schools at the age of 14. After successfully graduating from high school at 16 and college at 18, she joined the airline Aeroflot and now flies around the globe as a sought-after stewardess. Katya is the face of the ISSFestival on posters and the website.
Firine joined the International Space Education Institute (ISEI) at the age of 11 and participated in the NASA Rover Challenge 3 times as well as she took 3 trips to Moscow. Her dream is to become an astronaut and she works hard and consistently to achieve this. She wins every science competition she enters, whether in Germany, USA or Russia. Firine is the current world champion pilot of her class on the NASA Human Exploration Roverchallenge. Her sponsors are private aerospace companies and her place to study aeronautics and astronautics at the Technical University of Delft is also already secured. Firine is now 16 years young and is preparing for her A-levels.
Thommy joined Team Germany in Leipzig when he was 15 and led the construction of the first international NASA rover. After the second successful participation, he submitted a BeLL thesis to his high school in Reichenbach (Vogtland) with this topic and graduated with "Very Good". Several trips to Russia, the Mars project, NASA and around the world followed, until he started studying mechanical engineering in Dresden. There he joined the formula student team "Elbflorace" and graduated with his diploma in Zurich. Today he manages the branch of Hafle GmbH in Reichenbach, a company for plastic welding processes with 16 employees. His branch is currently undergoing massive expansion.
Nadin Rößler (27) took part in the astronomy club of the Goethe-Gymnasium Chemnitz and applied to the ISEI at the age of 16. In 10 years of membership she became the most successful international NASA rover pilot with two 2nd places and 5 participations. The young natural scientist proved an existence of an exoplanet! for her school-leaving examination, attended hundreds of ISEI courses, excursions abroad and gave lectures herself. During her studies, she led the outreach of the DIANE team at the Technical University of Dresden. From Esrange, Sweden, she launched an inflatable antenna (ESA project REXUS) to an altitude of 90 km using a sounding rocket. In April 2018, her team was part of the launch of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket with the exoplanet search satellite TESS. In 2019, Nadin took her state examination in maths and physics and has since been working as a teacher at the Ehrenfried Walter von Tschirnhaus Gymnasium in Dresden.
Jasleen grew up in the city of Kurukshetra (Haryana) in India. Space shuttle astronaut Kalpana Chawla is also from this town. Her dream of space travel came true when she joined the Leipzig NASA rover team and won first place in 2015. That same year, she began her studies at the University of Huntsville Alabama. She has since become the executive assistant to the Department of Private Spaceflight at Embry Riddle University in Daytona and now works at the Boeing Moonbase in Houston. Jasleen passed a pilot's licence and is now training as an astronaut for super long-duration flights. She is part of the Sirius-21 mission at the Institute of Biomedical Problems (IMBP) in Moscow. This experiment involves training for long-duration flights such as those to Mars. Sirius-21 begins in November 2021.
Evgeniy comes from the Komi Republic, which is located in the North Ural Mountains in Russia. During a summer camp in Crimea in 2009, he got to know the International Space Education Institute (ISEI) and accepted an invitation to do an internship in Leipzig. He learned the German language and digitised the Leipzig NASA rover. Since then, it can be produced in modular construction as a small series by Leipzig companies and students on an internship. Since 2016, he has been working as a scientific assistant at the Chair of High Frequency Technology at the Technical University of Dresden and has developed inflatable antennas for satellites. These were also used for testing in the troposphere. Today, he is writing his doctoral thesis and is involved in the Exomars rover and the development of the 5G standard.
Alina is from Bolivia and came across a Spanish article by the Leipzig Team Germany of the International Space Education Institute (ISEI). Then she immediately flew to Leipzig on her own at the age of 15 and took part in the 12-week summer workshop in 2015. Here she learned a lot about space travel, construction and teamwork. In the following years, she took part in the NASA Human Exploration Roverchallenge with the team from Leipzig and also her own teams from Bolivia. Alina also became a sought-after spokesperson for space travel in her country through many newspaper and TV reports. She is also seen as an idol of her generation. Today she studies in New York and is often invited to embassy events in her spacesuit.
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Tobias comes from Leipzig, he attended Portitz school. At the age of 13, he saw the NASA rover at the Day of Crafts in BTZ-Borsdorf and immediately tried it out. Since then, the 4 wheelers have never let him go. Two years later he led his own team and built his own rover with which he competed several times in the USA. His rover ended up on display next to the Apollo Rover at the Marshall Spaceflight Center for 1 year and was used in the US children's space adventure film "Space Warriors". Tobias completed school and an apprenticeship as an automotive mechatronics technician and now runs his own automobile maintenance workshop in Leipzig.
This team from Niteroi near Rio de Janeiro is based at the school "Colegio Santa Terezinha". In 2016, the current team leader Rafaela Bastos read the Spanish reports of the NASA teams from Leipzig. Fascinated by these opportunities, the team has been successfully applying since 2017 and regularly completes competitions and workshops. They built their successful rover "Titan" in Leipzig. In Brazil, it is modified every year. The photo in front of the Sugarloaf Mountain is impressive and makes all the Leipzig companies involved proud. In the meantime, Rafaela is studying in the USA and her successors are building their own workshop based on the Leipzig model.