Lesson 11.1 Challenge: A school is a habitat too
A lunar habitat is a system in which every input is scarce — air, water, food, energy, time — and every output matters. Nothing is wasted. Nothing is invisible. Every behaviour has a measurable consequence on the wellbeing of the crew.
Now imagine looking at your own school with the same eyes.
Your school is a habitat. It has air (and how it moves through corridors). It has water (and where it goes when the bell rings). It has energy (most of it imported, most of it un-monitored). It has time (the most rationed resource of any school day). It has crew — students, teachers, cleaners, technicians, kitchen staff. It has a culture. It has decisions about who eats what, when, where; about which voices are heard in which rooms.
Most schools never look at themselves this way. The gift of going to Lunares — even for five days — is that you come back with outside eyes. You will see your school the way an astronaut returning from a six-month mission sees their kitchen: as a system, full of choices, most of which were never named as choices.
The Lunares 2027 residency runs over five days in April or May 2027 (exact dates confirmed by 31 December 2026). You will arrive Sunday afternoon at Piła airport, transfer to the Lunares site, and at 19:00 enter the habitat for simulated isolation. From that moment, you do not leave the habitat until Friday morning. Your communications with the outside world are mediated by a simulated 3-second time delay (representing Earth-Moon latency). You sleep, eat, work, exercise, and do science inside a closed system.
Your daily activities include three structured experiments that link directly to your school: a water-budget audit, a circadian-light study, and a closed-loop greenhouse module. Each experiment generates a measurement and a reflection. By Friday, the cohort produces a 12-page habitat report — and each learner produces a one-page “this is what my school could change” draft, which becomes the seed of their Pillar 4 STEM School Label submission.
💡 Bella’s tip: The astronaut metaphor is not a costume. It is a way of seeing. You will only carry it home if you let the habitat actually constrain you for five days. Bring less than you think you need; you will discover you needed less than you thought.
Two non-negotiables before you travel:
Health and safety briefing completed and parental consent form returned by 15 March 2027.
Habitat orientation (Lesson 11.2 below) completed before travel.
📝 Activity: In the forum thread “Stage 11 — My crew role”, post (a) your assigned crew role (commander / engineer / scientist / medic-and-life-support / communications), (b) one thing you anticipate finding difficult, (c) one thing you are bringing from your own family habits that you think the crew will benefit from. 5–7 sentences.