A City on Psyche: Butian at GFSSM 2026
From 13 to 17 August 2026, the Global Future Space Scholars Meet (GFSSM) brought young participants to Beijing. Butian Engineering Club from Hangzhou No.2 High School entered Teams Tianji and Tianshu; both advanced from the qualifying round to the national final. Their task was to imagine a mining settlement in the asteroid belt in the year 2115.
The two Butian teams at the 2026 final.
The scenario: a city on Psyche in 2115
The challenge called for a space city serving mining operations on the M-type asteroid Psyche. The teams had to connect infrastructure, habitat, structure, operations and a business case in a proposal they could defend together.
In qualification: Tianshu's engineering baseline
For the qualifying round, Tianshu developed an original model with a non-rotating central axis, one torus and four spokes. Its reviewed engineering baseline specifies a 640 m outer diameter, a 480 m inner diameter and a target range of 0.75g to 1g across the torus. These figures show how the team turned a vision of living in space into a structure they could calculate and review. The image below is the qualifying-round model; it does not depict the settlement designed during the Psyche final.
Team Tianshu's original qualifying-round model · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
Two finalist teams, two podium finishes
| Team | Virtual company | Final result |
|---|---|---|
| Tianji | Lunar Express | Company placed second |
| Tianshu | Orbital Industries | Company placed third |
Some award recipients after the final.
Tianshu also won Best Qualifying Proposal. Tianshu member Yao Shuyue received the Best Leader award.
Members held specific roles in their companies:
| Team | Student | Role / award |
|---|---|---|
| Tianji | Sun Boqiao | Vice President of Engineering |
| Tianji | Xu Jiaxuan | Habitat Director |
| Tianji | Fan Zhuoxuan | Structure Director |
| Tianshu | Li Yifei | Company President |
| Tianshu | Yao Shuyue | Vice President of Business; Best Leader |
| Tianshu | Fang Shengyi | Infrastructure Director |
From practice briefs to the 24-hour challenge
Before the final, new members learned unfamiliar software, worked with complex data and completed practice tasks under the guidance of older club members. They then drafted and revised qualifying proposals. At the final, they joined virtual companies, ran for leadership roles, rehearsed their defenses and worked with students from other teams.
The 24-hour challenge began at 8 a.m. on 15 August. Company members designed a surface base on Psyche while negotiating early communication problems, rebuilding parts of their proposals, reaching agreement late at night and checking the final work before dawn. Afterward, more than 40 company members met to recognize one another's contributions and identify what to improve.
The 24-hour challenge required repeated decisions and revisions.
At the final defense, the proposal had to stand up to questions.
Experience passed between cohorts
Zhu Maoqi advised the teams. Hu Yue, a former Butian Tianji competitor from 2021, returned as an academic adviser to answer questions and help with the review. Former club president Qian Kun and former vice president Shen Yue were among the older members supporting this year's participants.
In their reflections, Sun Boqiao and Fang Shengyi both described the work beyond the technical design: resolving conflicting views, coordinating across teams and languages, and weighing organizational and commercial decisions. Those lessons now sit alongside the results as material for the next cohort.
Team rosters
| Team | Members |
|---|---|
| Tianji | Cai Xinyan (captain), Jiang Jiqiao, Fan Zhuoxuan, Xu Jiaxuan, Qi Lüxiao, Sun Boqiao, Niu Ruochen, Qiu Yijie, You Jianuo, Wu Ge, Weng Junze |
| Tianshu | Li Yifei (captain), Yao Shuyue, Chen Jiazhi, Fang Shengyi, Kan Zhichen, Liao Yuechen, Wu Yutong, Xie Linnuo |
Adapted from the Hangzhou No.2 High School 2026 GFSSM article; event photographs come from that article. Original text and images: Butian Engineering Club; edited by Bao Jiani; reviewed by Zhu Maoqi and Ge Huaitian. The qualifying-round model and figures come from the original 2026 Tianshu records in the club's gfssm-data archive and are attributed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Qualifying and final imagery are identified separately.