Friday 13 and Saturday 14 November, CNES, ESA and Aerospace Valley kicked off the 4th edition of ActInSpace®, the top international competition devoted to space applications. Midway between a hackathon and a start-up weekend, ActInSpace® held concurrently in some 39 countries and 62 cities on all five continents. 

We are very pleased to announce that this year we brought ActInSpace Hackathon to Azerbaijan for the 2nd time, with Baku, the capital, being as a host city for the event. ActInSpace Azerbaijan is organized by the French-Azerbaijani University (UFAZ) with the sponsorship of Azercosmos OJSC, Innoland | Incubation & Acceleration Center, STEP IT Academy and Embassy of France in Azerbaijan. This year the competition took place online on Microsoft Teams Platform due to the requirements of the quarantine regime in the country because of the current pandemic.

Open to entrants from all horizons, the competition aims to develop entrepreneurship and forge ties between space stakeholders and citizens by setting challenges for teams to solve based on patents, software, data or space infrastructures. Its main objective is to bring space technology, infrastructure, data etc., to launch start-ups which will fit into our daily life.

Aimed at students but open to entrants from all fields and levels, ActInSpace® pits teams of two to five against each other, giving them just 24 hours to devise an innovative and realistic project for a start-up on the basis of challenges set by CNES, ESA, Airbus and other partners of the event. During 24 hours, 12 teams from Azerbaijan were assisted over the weekend by engineering and business mentors from leading companies of Azerbaijan, on hand to help them present the best project possible to the judging panel. 

The winner has been selected by the Grand Jury - French Ambassador HE Zacharie Gross, ASOIU Rector Professor Mustafa Babanli, Director of R&D of Azercosmos Tarlan Mammadzade, Managing Director of SUP VC Vusal Karimli and Board Member of Innovation Agency Azerbaijan Fariz Guliyev, team of Space Invaders won the first place with their ReinCARnation project and was rewarded with round-trip tickets and 2 days accommodation while their trip to ActInSpace 2020 Finals in Toulouse, France! Besides, winning teams - Space Invaders (1st place) and Astralis (2nd place) won 6-month free working space and mentoring from INNOLAND Incubation & Acceleration Center. Contestants also competed for internal prizes from STEP IT Academy and other sponsored prizes. 

We appreciate and thank all the contestants, experts and jury members for their efforts and participation in the hackathon; congratulate the winning teams and wish them many more success!