Following our annual tradition of remembering all the remarkable things that happened to Noosphere over the year, this year we were honoured to hold a number of events, achieve some goals, invite a lot of notable guests to visit our headquarters, and more.
EVENTS
Annual events have always been a milestone for us. This year each of our events grew again:
BestRoboFest
BestRoboFest, the biggest robotics event in Ukraine, took place on June 2nd and 3rd at a new location – Bartolomeo Best River Resort in Dnipro. Visitors enjoyed robotics competitions and a Copter Race show, participated in educational and family activities, viewed MonsterCarsUA exhibition, witness the record of the largest charity robot in Ukraine and just relax at the riverside area, enjoying the atmosphere of a family holiday.
BestRoboFest 2018 gathered more than 25, 000 guests in two days, which made it the most visited BestRoboFest edition so far.
Amateur Rocketry
On June 19-25, 2018 the Yangel Cup (the amateur rocketry world cup) and Ukrainian Rocket Modelling Championship, the two biggest rocketry challenges in Ukraine, took place. 18 teams and 46 competitors took part in Rocketry Competition in Dnipro area.
A month before that, on May 19, Noosphere has also held Ukraine Rocketry Challenge near Chernihiv. It was an amateur rocketry contest in S2P class.
Copter Race
This year we have also expanded the tradition of filling the skies above Dnipro with drones. Noosphere organized Copter Race – an annual drone piloting competition. This year it took place on September 15-16, at the city’s famous Meteor stadium. The event was held in association with FAI – the World Air Sports Federation.
Pilots from Ukraine, Latvia and Italy came to Dnipro to compete in drone racing categories. A stage of FAI Drone Racing World Cup in F3U class, Ukrainian Drone racing championship and Freestyle event took place during Copter Race 2018. Noosphere was also able to successfully test the eNavigator system – an event management solution, which was later used at the FAI World Drone Racing Championship in China.
SPACE EVENTS
Star Track
The 2nd edition of Star Track – a space tournament for students – took place on June 9th. 10 teams came to the Space Engineering School in Dnipro and presented their projects in 4 categories: CanSat satellite, CanSat launch vehicle, Research Rocket Complex and Freestyle. Winners shared the prize pool of UAH 20,000 and the chance to continue working on their projects with the help of mentors from Noosphere.
Star Track 3 took place on December 22 at the Noosphere Engineering School. 12 teams from Dnipro, Kharkiv and Kyiv competed for the prize fund of UAH 25,000 and support from Noosphere in implementing their projects.
NASA Space Apps Challenge
Dnipro took part in the international hackathon, held annually by NASA with the help of Noosphere on October 20-21, 2018.
85 participants formed teams and presented 14 projects in Dnipro. After two days, judges named two winners: The “Worth a Thousand Words” team with their educational video set, made of NASA research data, and the “Interstellar Dolphin” team, with a prototype of a 3D printed gravity immobilizer.
It was the 2nd time Noosphere organized the NASA Space Apps Challenge in Dnipro. This year, the NASA Space Apps Challenge took place in 200+ cities all over the world.
Apart from that, Noosphere organized two major volleyball tournaments for IT specialists. Also, Noosphere started accepting applications for Vernadsky Challenge 2019 – an engineering startup contest.
GUESTS
Noosphere was also happy to accept honourable guests and establish new connections:
Petro Poroshenko, the President of Ukraine, visited Firefly Aerospace R&D centre, where our co-founder Max Polyakov gave him a tour of Firefly Aerospace technologies and Noosphere initiatives, like MyPol, ArtOS and the Noosphere Engineering School, on May 17.
Volodymyr Groysman, the Prime Minister of Ukraine, also met with Association Noosphere members exhibitions during Kyiv Economic forum on October 18.
Ole Terje Horpestad, the ambassador of Norway in Ukraine, honoured our headquarters with an unofficial visit on May 30.
Nolan Peterson, the foreign correspondent of the multimedia news organization Daily Signal, visited on June 14.
Andy
Ashlee Vance, author of Elon Musk biography, along with Grant Slater, famous space-themed visual journalist, visited Dnipro on August 2nd. Apart from being guests at our headquarters, Ashlee and Grant agreed to hold a book-signing session, organized by Noosphere at the Dnipro State Administration Building.
Alan Merbaum, Senior Manager for International Business Development with Lockheed Martin, was a guest at our headquarters on August 31.
OTHER MILESTONES
50+ participants competed in #Noosphere_Contest_2018 on Facebook throughout the year, with over 12 creative projects completed.
Our co-founder Max Polyakov was invited to be a judge at the MBios Challenge – a contest of biomedical startups
the influence of Max Polyakov and Noosphere was mentioned multiple times in the book “Hammer and Silicon: The Soviet Diaspora in the US Innovation Economy – Immigration, Innovation, Institutions, Imprinting, and Identity” by Sheila M. Puffer, Daniel J. McCarthy, and Daniel M. Satinsky.
Noosphere officially became a member of USUBC – US- Ukraine Business Council – an organization that encourages businesses from the USA to invest in Ukraine.
The Noosphere Engineering School was honoured to get a Social Projects Awards as the best educational initiative. Moreover, the Noosphere Engineering School has opened two new laboratories in Ukraine this year: in Rivne and Cherkassy.
As you see, 2018 was a year of steady development and a widening of the borders in spreading the ideas of Noosphere all over the world. We look forward to helping even more people catch this vision in 2019!