site.btaFifth Edition of Hello Space, Bulgaria Calling Festival Begins on Tuesday

The fifth edition of the Hello Space, Bulgaria Calling festival will be held on Tuesday in Sofia, said the Atlantic Club in Bulgaria, one of the organizers.

The event will be held at Sofia Tech Park. The organization of the forum also involved the National Space & Steam cluster under the auspices of the Minister of Education and Science, with the support of the Sofia Municipality, the US Embassy and the Israel Embassy in Sofia.

A special guest and main lecturer of the forum will be the Israeli astronaut, entrepreneur and former military pilot Eytan Stibbe. He participated in the Rakia Mission to the International Space Station. Stibbe will join the event in Sofia live to talk about his journey into space, the organizers said.

The festival has established itself as an international platform with the participation of leading experts from NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), the European Union Satellite Centre (SatCen), the companies Lockheed Martin, Axiom Space, EnduroSat and other organizations. This year's programme is expected to include prominent scientists from the country and abroad, the organizers added.

Prof. Dr. Henk Hoekstra, cosmologist and a lecturer at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands, who will present the topic of the dark side of the universe. Prof. Leandar Litov, a physicist from Sofia University and a Bulgarian representative in the Council of CERN, will lead a panel dedicated to the connection between artificial intelligence and space. Assoc. Prof. Dimitar Zhelev - Deputy Dean of of Sofia University's Faculty of Geology and Geography and co-founder of the Geographer.BG platform, will present a view from space at the human imprint on Earth’s nature.

Moderators of the event will be Assoc. Prof. Vladimir Bozhilov, exoplanets specialist, and Prof. Dr. Milena Georgieva, a researcher in the field of longevity.

The programme also includes a demonstration of the special forces of the Bulgarian Army, as well as a live boat involvement in the Indian Ocean with Stefan Ivanov, a navigator and a Guinness world record holder.

The key goal of the Atlantic Club, the Space & Steam cluster and the festival is to send a third Bulgarian astronaut in space in the next decade, the event organizers noted.