This week, we had a space launch, we donned the Oculus Rift to demo Oscar Raby’s immersive documentary, Assent and we welcomed four brilliant new residents into the mix.

At 18:59 last night, a Chinese rocket took off with a radio experiment for Pocket Spacecraft. A group of Bristol and UWE students came to the Studio meeting room, which Michael had transformed into a mission control centre specially for the launch. The main experiment will run on Monday, when Pocket Spacecraft will use the world’s largest radio telescope to determine where the spacecraft is in space. This is all in preparation for their upcoming mission to the moon. Check out their twitter feed for further updates.

Visual artist Oscar Raby came into the Studio today to give a fascinating talk about his recent VR documentary project, Assent. The documentary explores his fathers’ experiences of being a military officer in the Chilean army. We had a full house for the talk, and Oscar invited visitors to sign up to demo sessions in the afternoon. Every session was signed up to within seconds. We will be posting a write-up of Oscar’s talk in the coming weeks, and will tweet about it once it’s up.

Daredevil Project have been working on the design and UX for their new competitive photo-sharing app, #DUEL. They are in the process of crafting something really intuitive and beautiful, and have recruited a new member of the team to help them to do so. We are very happy to welcome designer Naio Tsarouchis into the fold of the Studio. The beta of the app will be launched at the end of November. We’ll let you know about any upcoming play test sessions.

Along with Naio, we are excited to announce a few other residents that joined us this week. Kev Kirkland is the founder of Data Unity – a platform allowing non-technical people to manipulate and visualise their data, helping to make it accessible and meaningful to the public. Tara Sachdeva is co-founder of Compass Presents, who create installations for festivals and put on performances using projection mapping, specially crafted sets and circus performers to make films spill off the screen. Joe Ryan is developing a chair controller for VR headsets - through leaning forward/backwards/left/right you'll be able to control your virtual self. We are really looking forward to seeing what they get up to in the Studio.

Diego from nu desine and Silas from Reach Robotics will be going to Pitch@Palace on 5 November. Silas will be demoing his MechaMonsters and Diego will be performing a demo set on the Alphasphere. As of this week, we have an Alphasphere permanently set up in the Studio library so that anyone can play. Pop along on an Open Studio Friday to have a go.

Last week, Studio resident Chloe Meineck recently won the Blueprint Award for Design 2014. Chloe’s work sits in between the worlds of technology, craft, design and art. She recently joined the Studio to work on prototypes and business models for her current projects, which include Music Memory Box, a tool allowing dementia sufferers to stir their distant memories and Girls Making History, a project she is working on in partnership with KWMC, to develop a tool allowing 13-24 year old women to keep track of their emotional state and recognise when relationships become unhealthy.

Tomorrow, Watershed is hosting an E.T. workshop as part of the Family Arts Festival. Studio residents Ben Gwalchmai and Danielle Vass are running workshops. Ben will be hosting a digital storytelling workshop, and Danielle is hosting a Little Bits workshop, where the kids will be adorning E.T.’s spaceship with lights and moving parts.