Mission Zero
Mission accomplished as 103 of our students from Thirds, LIV and UIV took on the challenge to write code during Computing lessons that was successfully run space. They were tasked to write a simple program to take a reading from the colour and luminosity sensor on an Astro Pi computer on board the International Space Station. Our brilliant students successfully passed the challenges set, which involved setting the background colour in a personalised image for the astronauts to see as they go about their work in Space!
The theme for Mission Zero 2023/24 was ‘flora and fauna’ with many of our creative computer scientists choosing to create wonderful personalised digital images of flowers, trees, animals and insects.
All students that successful completed the mission receive a certificate with a digital image showing the precise date, time and direction of where their code was run, whilst pointing at the Earth onboard the International Space Station.
Entering competitions like the ESA Mission zero has certainly motivated, challenged, and boosted the skills and knowledge of Computing education here at FHS. Students managed to flourish in an environment where they were allowed to develop their teamwork, problem-solving, and time management skills, skills valued by employers. Above all, our students have truly enjoyed taking their learning outside the classroom and solving real-world problems in areas such as sustainability, climate change, and data science. This is an amazing effort from our amazing young computer scientists as they take their coding skills outside the classroom and towards the stars.
Mr El Moudden, Head of Computing
Mission Space Lab
In other stellar news, this year, two UIV pupils, Ani R and Gabi C, participated in the AstroPi Mission Space Lab Challenge sponsored by the European Space Agency and the Astro Pi Foundation. The challenge involves creating computer programs that run on the Raspberry Pi computers on the International Space Station (ISS) to conduct scientific experiments in space. This year’s task was calculating the speed at which the ISS orbits Earth.
The algorithm of the FHS team’s code, called RCTrail, used images captured by the onboard AstroPi computers’ camera to calculate the distance between two points in photos of the Earth’s surface. This distance data, combined with the time interval between when the images were taken, was used to calculate the ISS’s speed.
Approximately 500 teams comprised of 2-6 members (totalling around 2000 participants) from over 20 countries across Europe and ESA member states participated in the challenge. All submitted programs had to undergo a rigorous testing process. If a program passed the testing, it was awarded ‘Flight Status’ and sent to run in space. Only 236 teams were granted flight status. The UK had the highest number of teams achieving flight status (61), and FHS’s RCTrail was among them!
The team received images captured by their code and a certificate for their achievement. They were also invited to attend a live Q&A with Swedish-born ESA astronaut Marcus Wandt. Marcus was part of the Axiom Mission 3 crew that departed for the International Space Station (ISS) on January 18th, 2024, where he stayed for 22 days before returning to Earth. Fantastic work, Gabi and Ani!
Dr MacTavish, Head of Physics
