23.02.16 – Another Week and More Fantastic Developments from the Space Programme Team
This week, the publicity team have gone out of their way to try and promote the launch to the students of the school. We organised a bake-sale to help raise funds for any future space programmess the school may want to host and also used it as an opportunity to upgrade some of the cameras that will be fitted on to our payload. Students arrived in droves at the dining room to grab any homemade brownies and cake still left. During this week of fundraising we have also launched two competitions, one to send your own tie up to space and the final competition was to have a guess as to where our payload will land.
Thank you to all those who have participated in this week of fundraising as it will enable us to allow future students or younger students to do the same thing when they’re older.
We have also designed a Logo and some polo shirts for the team to wear. On the programming side of things, the team has really stepped up their game with the payload and are in full flow with designing code ready for launch. A big effort has gone into the programming, which is the backbone of the whole project.
Speaking of the launch, the flight team, who are in charge of deciding the launch location and predicting where it will land, have announced that the launch will be taking place from Ross-On-Wye in Herefordshire. More dates will be announced as we have them. As all these things start falling into place, the more the launch is starting to materialise into a reality!
Ed, Year 12
23.02.16 – Progress Update
After a successful week of fundraising in the school dining hall, the team managed to raise funds to help us purchase an extra camera which will be fitted to our payload. This will mean that we will have HD video recorded throughout the flight.
The flight team have put a lot of time and hard work into finalising the details of the actual launch date. We hope to be leaving for Herefordshire next Monday, where students will be able to see all their hard work come to fruition. The flight team have also had to take into account predicted winds and any other weather issues that may face us.
After meticulous planning and long discussions the project is really starting to come together. The engineering team has added a few final touches to the payload to make sure it is balanced correctly and now the only thing that could possibly stand in our way of achieving our goal is Mother Nature herself. We hope that the winds are on our side on a day which will surely go down in Rishworth School history: the day Rishworth went to space!
Ed, Year 12
04.02.16 Holly’s Report
Rishworth School is about to take ‘one small step’ on an amazing mission into Space.
The idea of this project is to send a computer up to Space (well, ‘near-Space’, as Mr Bell our teacher keeps reminding us!) under a weather balloon, gathering data, storing video and broadcasting live images back to Earth. This mission is to help children to become more aware of Space and science, and to get pupils to join in with things they never usually would.
It all started four months ago when we heard about the idea online, and decided Rishworth School could have a go at it. From this first thought came over 40 entries from students to join the Space Programme team, soon narrowed down to 20 though their ability to be creative with ideas and show what skills they could contribute to the project. Mr Bell and Mr McGarry, the team leaders, then put together a flight team, publicity team, engineering team and a documentary team. These teams are all combining new skills to make the project a success.
Only a few months into the programme, we have already made the module and transmission equipment, organised the flight paths and have a few launch date ‘windows’ approved.
Heathfield School pupils are also involved by running a competition to design a ‘pilot’ which will be sent up into space.
We are hoping this project is successful and know we will get some interesting information sent back from Space about altitude, pressure, direction, humidity, temperature and GPS. Fingers crossed it doesn’t land in the sea!
We are already planning for next year’s project and so far we have raised hundreds of pounds by running bake sales and competitions that the whole school can get involved with.
Our launch will hopefully take place in March at Cambridge University and the whole team will be going down to Churchill College for the day, working along side PhD students and hopefully learning lots of new things.
We are all extremely excited for the future and cannot wait to go down to Cambridge! You can also join in with all the excitement by following our Rishworth School Twitter and Facebook pages!
Watch this Space!
