Astro Pi: Mission Zero

Posted at 11:55 am on 10th March, 2022

Wellacre is Space-Bound

For the first time ever, Wellacre students’ work is going to be launched into space! 

Year 9 and 10 students jumped at the chance to take part in the Astro Pi: Mission Zero challenge to write a computing program, which will run on the International Space Station (ISS) later this year.

The team of Computing Ambassadors worked together to design programs which will measure moisture, humidity and temperature on board using the new Mark II Astro Pi’s computer’s Sense HAT.  Each student was also invited to create a custom message for the astronauts to be displayed.

Wellacres’ programs met the mission’s criteria and will run on ISS in May.  All team members will receive a unique certificate with their name and the exact coordinates of the ISS at time their program ran.

Miss Lunn, Leader of Computing, said:

“This was an exciting opportunity for students to use their programming and Raspberry Pi skills to design functional and efficient programs for the ISS and it’s space travellers!  We look forward to finding out the exact location of the ISS when they run.”

Tom, Year 9, said:

“It’s going to be really cool that we will be running code on the most expensive single structure ever built!”

Well done to our Year 9 and 10 Computing Ambassadors who took part: 

Jack R, Jack H, Aidan and Tom, Year 9, and Shahmeer, Anthony, Nicky, George, James and Harrison, Year 10.  

In their roles as Ambassadors, students are next week embarking on hosting lunch clubs for KS3 students in robotics, raspberry pi and micro bits, sharing their skills, knowledge and teaching resources that they have created themselves with their peers. 

Mrs Sharrock, Principal, commented:

“The Computing Ambassadors are amazing! Self-driven, ambitious and providing their resources to assist KS3 students in extra-curricular provision. Well done!”