Reaching for the stars! Pupils take part in Astro Pi Mission Zero

On Tuesday 7th February, Year 3 pupils at Charles Darwin Primary, took the opportunity to be part of Astro Pi Mission Zero, and have their code run in space!

The pupils took part by coding a simple program, this took a reading from a colour and luminosity sensor from on board the International Space Station, and was used to set the background colour in a personalised image for the astronauts to see as they go about their daily tasks. 

The pupils were tasked with meeting this year's theme which was “Flora and Fauna”, designing flowers, trees, insects and animals for the astronauts to see. This was an amazing experience to introduce our pupils to the world of computing and computer science.

This was an opportunity to link our computing curriculum with real-life applications, hopefully, inspiring the Computer Scientists of the future. Dr Trudy Coleman, Teacher of Computer Science at Sir Isaac Newton Sixth Form organised the event, with the assistance of Year 12 computing students to deliver the session to children at Charles Darwin Primary.

Dr Trudy Coleman said:

“The session was amazingly rewarding - watching Y12 students share their love of programming with younger children was fantastic!”

As part of the session, pupils will receive a certificate which has a record of the exact start and end time of their program, with the position of the International Space Station when their program ran - a piece of space science history for them.