Scifest Africa 2015 hailed as a big success

Scifest Africa 2015 hailed as a big success.

Organisors of the 2015 Science Festival in Grahamstown have hailed this year's event as a big success.

Scifest Africa Director Anja Fourie, says the 19th edition saw 24 000 tickets sold, while attendance topped 58 400

Fourie says media coverage of Scifest Africa 2015 was worth more than R5.4 million.

She says she was particularly pleased with the presentations by top Nasa scientists who dominated the lecture program by presenting eight of the 14 lectures on offer.

Topics ranged from how to drive a rover on Mars to sending space probes to dwarf planets.

"We had chief scientists and astronauts, the deputy chief technologist and the lead project scientist. Nasa headquarter in Washington have told us that it's very seldom that we will have this type of intellectual capacity in a room together." says Fourie.