Topics of the week 29

The spectacular Asclepios VI moon simulation begins this Sunday in the former Gotthard fortress of Sasso San Gottardo. For two weeks, ten international students - including two Swiss - will simulate life on a moonbase in complete isolation. The network of icy tunnels stretching for kilometers deep inside the mountain massif provides the perfect testing ground for future underground stations designed to protect against deadly cosmic radiation on the actual moon.

This student-organized mission, unique in the world, represents hard science: Clad in heavy spacesuits, the crew conducts nighttime outdoor missions in alpine terrain and tests innovative research projects ranging from VR moon landings to extreme crop cultivation.

Our photographer captures the fascinating, surreal, science-fiction-like images of this space adventure in the middle of the Swiss Alps for you.

When French-Swiss tennis pioneer M. Audeoud from Morges stepped onto the newly laid clay courts of the Grand Hotel Bellevue in Gstaad in the summer of 1915, carrying his racket and wearing traditional long white pants, no one could have guessed that a world-famous sports classic was being born.

The pictures of legendary sports photographer Jules Decrauzat document the beginnings of a tournament created in the midst of World War I to boost tourism in the Bernese Oberland.

Over a century later, the former invitational tournament has evolved into the renowned EFG Swiss Open Gstaad, the highest-altitude ATP tournament in Europe. Our photographer Peter Schneider is on hand to capture the world-class players fighting for crucial world ranking points in the middle of the Alps.

The desire to travel remains unbroken among the Swiss: The start of the summer vacation brings a massive rush of passengers to Zurich Airport. On peak days, up to 110,000 travelers crowd through the terminals to fly to one of the 211 destinations offered worldwide from Switzerland's largest national airport.

According to the airport's booking forecasts, sun-seekers are heading primarily for classic Spanish and Portuguese destinations like Mallorca and Porto. In addition to a noticeable boom in long-haul flights to Bangkok and Singapore, the airport is also seeing a striking trend toward cooler destinations in the North this summer, such as Stockholm

In 1926, the pioneering professor Paul Götz laid the foundation in Arosa for a global scientific sensation: what is now the world's longest continuous measurement series of total ozone. What began on the roof of the Light Climatic Observatory (Haus Firnelicht) in Arosa to research the alpine healing climate evolved into one of the most significant data series for global ozone and atmospheric monitoring. The data from Switzerland contributed significantly to the detection of ozone depletion and provided the scientific basis for the 1987 Montreal Protocol.

Today, exactly 100 years later, Swiss ozone monitoring is more modern than ever. We take an exclusive look behind the scenes of today's measurements in Davos (where the Arosa measurements have since been relocated) and Payerne.