Barcelona Moon Team attended the International Astronautical Congress in Beijing during the last days of September. A complete delegation of the team including Xavier Claramunt, Marc Zaballa and Rafael Harillo from Galactic Suite, and Mariella Graziano, Pablo Colmenarejo, and Jesus Gil Fernández from GMV, travelled to Beijing to attend the congress.

The team updated the delegates on its mission status in the Hitchhiking to the Moon session and held different meetings with their Chinese counterpart at CGWIC, including subjects such as the propulsion subsystem that the Chinese Institutes will provide to the team.

During its stay in China, the team also met the XPF representative, Andrew Barton, and other GLXP teams such as Team Italia and SpaceIL.

The IAC2013 was a very successful congress with almost 3500 delegates from 74 countries, and 80 organizations from all over the world featuring at the Space Exhibition. These included specialized technology firms and national space agencies. China was obviously within them and displayed spectacular hardware such as the recently reentered Shenzhou10 capsule or the models of the Chang’e-3 lunar lander and rover.