A worldwide contest has again redefined the concept of “high art” by briefly converting the International Space Station (ISS) into a gallery for the winners’ works.
The space station’s Cupola, which is usually lit by the colors of Earth shining through the module’s large, panoramic windows, recently took on a different palette as printouts of paintings, ink drawings and poetry blanketed its panes. The art, which was created by students and educators from the United States, Taiwan, Chile and the Philippines, depicted what it is like to live and work in space.
“For the second year in a row, the International Space Art and Poetry Contest has reignited my love for space beyond my wildest imagination. Bright minds from 35 countries around the world showcased wide-eyed curiosity, bright color and aspirational words,” said John Shoffner, a private astronaut who first stablished the competition as part of his Axiom-2 (Ax-2) mission to the space station in 2023.
In 2024, Stoffner’s Perseid Foundation received more than 2,700 entries from which he and a panel of judges — including record-setting astronaut and Ax-2 commander Peggy Whitson — selected four works of art and four poems. NASA then uploaded digital copies of the pieces to the orbiting laboratory, where the station’s crew printed them out, hung them in the Cupola and photographed each.
Related: International Space Station: Everything you need to know about the orbital laboratory
Among the winners was eight-year-old Lillian Eom of Chandler, Arizona, whose ink drawing was of a girl and a puppy, both in spacesuits, floating with an alien amongst a spacescape framed by rainbows and filled with multi-color stars and planets. Thad Mccauley, an art instructor from Aurora, Colorado, also won for his digital depiction of an astronaut on a rocket-powered board.
Among the winning poets was Gabriel Lanehart, an 8-year-old student from Spring, Texas, whose piece “In Space” began “Living in space would be like a race, but our science would have to keep up the pace…”. Therese Fait Bayaton, an 18-year-old from the Philippines, titled her winning verse “Celestial Revue.”
“To float, unfettered by gravity’s pull, Adrift in that ethereal, boundless lull, To witness the universe from a vantage so rare, A perspective both alien and beyond compare,” Bayaton wrote.
Other winners included 11-year-old Pedro Martin from Chile, 12-year-old Chiu Le Lee from Taiwan, 18-year-old Nadia Farmer from the U.S. and educator Kathleen Jakobsen. All eight will receive their station-printed work — which returned to Earth on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft in December — and a certificate stating their art was flown in space.
Every student who entered the contest received a digital participation certificate, their artwork posted to the contest’s website and a note from Shoffner.
“Thank you, once again, for showing me the sky is not the limit,” he wrote.
Sponsored by the ISS National Laboratory, the International Space Art and Poetry Contest is made possible with the help of Axiom Space and the Limitless Space Institute. The competition is one way the ISS National Lab is used to engage youth across the planet to spark their interest in space and StEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics)-focused careers.
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