Students explore Space School

Students from all over the UK explored life beyond Earth at the University’s Space School weekend (4-5 August 2012).

Nearly 40 students, aged 11-14, competed in space-based challenges such as building a landing system for a mobile space laboratory, investigating impact craters and designing and developing a space colony.

In Saturday’s space colony task, student teams had to convince others that their colony was a safe and viable place to live. One team protected their biodome with an Aerogel coating, a material they had just learnt about from Dr Mark Price, the University’s new Space Science lecturer.

he winning team, Galileo (Guy Proctor, Jamie Rice, Guy Uong and Sam Malkin) gave a presentation on their space colony on Mars, which included selling off areas to corporate companies.

The main challenge on Sunday was to design and build a rocket that would launch a hen’s egg up to 200 metres and recover it safely. The winning team, Phoenix (George and Matthew Hawkins, Juliet James and Georgina Gatehouse) managed a perfect flight.

Space School is run every year by the University’s School of Physical Sciences and caters for up to 45 students per weekend. Staff are a mix of academics, current and past students from the School.

A second Space School will take place this weekend (11-12 August 2012) with more complex challenges for 15-18 year-old students. To find out more, see www.kent.ac.uk/physical-sciences/spaceschool

Contact: pressoffice@kent.ac.uk

Story published at 4:22pm 8 August 2012