The units were shown off in September 2021 and launched aboard a SpaceX Dragon 2 freighter atop a Falcon 9 rocket in December. They are to replace the existing AstroPi units "Ed" and "Izzy" which have resided on the ISS for six years.

Maurer spent yesterday afternoon on the ISS setting up the new kit, which consists of Raspberry Pi 4 Model B hardware, a 12.3MP camera, and a range of sensors.

Engineers will eventually be able to control the units from the ground and upload code submissions from the Mission Zero and Mission Space Lab programs. Both are aimed at getting young people interested in coding, with one teaching participants how to write a program to take a humidity reading and display a message (without swears) to the astronauts while the other is a more complicated team-based affair.