On 28 November 2025, at the Ivano-Frankivsk Professional College of Vasyl Stefanyk Carpathian National University, a pilot testing of part of the training course of the international Erasmus+ project SPACE_READY – “Digital course for university analog astronauts space trainings” – took place.
The lecture-training for students was organised by the SpaceReady team of CNU, consisting of Prof. Volodymyr Kotsyubynskyi, Prof. Volodymyra Boichuk and Assoc. Prof. Liliia Turovska. During the session, one of the key modules of the future e-learning course – Space Challenges (Gravity, Temperature, Pressure, Radiation) – was tested. This module introduces future “analog astronauts” to the basic physical and engineering challenges of the space environment.
The students actively engaged in the work: they discussed how changes in gravity affect humans and equipment, why temperature control is so difficult in space, what problems are created by near vacuum and pressure differences, and how cosmic radiation limits mission duration. Using practical examples, they examined situations of spacesuit overheating during spacewalks, pressure loss in a hermetic module, and possible solutions – from the design of protective shells to the choice of materials for shielding.
Many questions were raised in particular about future flights to the Moon and Mars, opportunities for Ukrainian students to take part in analog missions, and which competencies need to be developed now in order to join space projects in the future. Such active participation of the audience allowed the course authors to see which topics are most interesting for young people and where more visualisations, examples and “plain language” explanations should be added.
The pilot testing of the Space Challenges module is an important part of achieving the objectives of the SPACE_READY project, in particular the development of a unified methodology and curriculum for training candidates for analog astronauts, as well as the further digitalisation of the course in the format of a self-paced e-learning module with open access for students and researchers. Pilot testing with students makes it possible to verify the clarity of the module structure, the logic of content delivery and the level of difficulty before the course is fully digitised and launched on an international platform.
The feedback received during the session will serve as a basis for refining the content, interactive tasks and examples, as well as for preparing the next stage – international pilot missions and trainings for lecturers and managers of analog space bases, as foreseen in Work Package WP4 of the project. In this way, the participation of students of the Ivano-Frankivsk Professional College makes a real contribution to the development of a European digital course for the training of university analog astronauts.
