20.02.23 - A new documentary on Radiotelevisione Svizzera (RSI) that aired February 19, 2023, spent a year with the EPFL Asclepios team, learning about their mission to build a lunar base simulation in a former Swiss military base.
Asclepios was created by a group of EPFL students to simulate a mission to the moon using the former military fortress of Sasso San Gottardo as a “lunar base”. It is the first initiative worldwide of a space simulation mission created completely by students, for students, in collaboration with academic institutions, scientists as well as industry. To learn more about this unique project, journalist Patrik Soergel followed the team for a year and created a documentary for RSI that aired on February 19, 2023.
The documentary follows the Asclepios team as for months on end, they undergo the long and difficult process of preparation for the mission: extreme physical and psychological training, medical tests, and working together as a team.
Will they succeed in their endeavor? And how realistic will the end result be? Throughout the documentary, we get the answer to these questions from the first Italian astronaut, Franco Malerba, who in 1992 went into orbit with - among others - Claude Nicollier. Between memories of spaghetti in space and improbable volleyball games in the absence of gravity, he will reveal to us what are the essential characteristics of an astronaut.