​It was fun at the first ever SpaceUP UK! 

It was 2 full days of action in a perfect layout at the trendy King's Cross Impact Hub, with the support of 2 friendly staff. Here is a full view of the room(s) while we eagerly awaits for everyone's arrival!

People came from all parts of Europe, as well as all parts of UK to host sessions and participate in discussions. People of NASA and of ESA came along too! The event has been reaching far and wide. On social media, it reached 2.4 million audience on earth, and a little bit beyond. In fact, SpaceUP:UK has reached slightly beyond the crust of Earth with @Astro_Alex setting the records by tweeting to us from the orbit, yes, from the orbit!  

Three seem to be the magic number during the weekend! There were three rooms, three organisers, three sponsors and three breaks for each day. Incidentally, three astronauts said "Hi"s  too. @Astro_Alex said hi from the Orbit and @Astro_Wheels from Mission Control, Houston. Tim Peake said Hi on Skype from Start City at Russia and we continued on for a good half an hour (+) of Q&A!  It was amazing and much appreciated for Tim to take some time to talk to us during the busy training schedule in Russia. Don't forget to take the tea into space, Tim! 

The days were packed and the three rooms were running at capacity. Exhibitors has created a great atmosphere and discussion areas. Unexpected conversations came up at the ISU stand when Steph and Chris started to talk about art and how it mixes with space. It was a perfect event for discussions, discussions and discussions:

Citizen Inventor had 2 modest booking at the Mars room to discuss how to kick off projects on cubesats together, as well as how to get EXOSKN, the open source space suit project off the ground. A lot of useful discussion and the rooms were packed with extra chairs on both sessions. So thank you all for contributing on the day. More importantly, please help to keep the discussion and everything else going, join us and take some actions! Watch out for upcoming events to get more projects off the ground. It's never too late to join. 

Towards the end, Kate (one of the organisers) was spotted to be under the influence of a different gravity in Mars (room), or was it the effect of Pubs nights? 

If you've missed all these, well, don't miss the next one! But you can still catch a glimpse of SpaceUP:UK with regards to the schedule and topics covered at SpaceUP:UK's schedule page. Links to presentations are getting updated in time, so keep checking back over the next month or so.  Media coverage will be updated there over time too, so keep polling the site.

​Over the weekend of Space App Challenge 2014, some 671 space projects were born to answer 54 challenges over 95 locations - that is without counting the 75 virtual project's physical location! Wow. The 54 challenges were in 5 themes: Technology in Space, Human Space Flight, Asteroids, Earth Watch and Robotics.

It sure was hard to pick a challenge to do out of the many, but when the clock strike 9 in the UK, Exoskn - an open source space suit project was born in the virtual location to answer to Kennedy Space Center's space wearable challenge, alongside 28 more projects across the world. It was one of the 75 virtual projects that got nominated for global judging but that wasn't the end. It's now making an open call for participants, looking to expand and keep moving forward with wearable electronic tinkerers, fashion designers, material scientist... name your role and skills!

Here is where it got to after 36 hours (excuse the speaker, she hasn't really got any clear mind to speak by then...) :