My Sun Chaser Blog – November

November

The Sun Chaser Team met four times in November and even found time to run a display at the school’s Open Evening.

The Education Team amassed an impressive collection of lesson activities and resources over the first two meetings. They then set about separating all of these resources into three categories for the three lessons they were planning.

The Modelling Team put together the first draft of a mathematical model to calculate the time of sunrise from the Stratosphere. They turned the model into an excel spreadsheet to make the calculations automatic and then they had the idea of building a programme in Visual Basic which would be easy to use on any laptop and could be shared on the Horizon website once it was finished. The learning curve was steep but they were both really excited by the challenge.

The Engineers quickly gained proficiency with the Arduino and began using it to construct increasingly complex projects ranging from a Traffic Light System to a programmable mood-light. The wall at the back of the classroom was painted with multi-coloured light from their project’s LED every meeting.

The Publicity Team took on two jobs, photo-documenting each meeting and filming what they hoped would be the first of many video interviews with people from the Space Industry that Horizon has planned over the next few years.

It was exciting watching each team member start to find their feet and gradually become the expert in their field. A lot of thought has clearly gone into matching each pupil to a role that would capture their imagination and play to their strengths.

My Sun Chaser Blog – October

Wow, time with the Sun Chaser team has passed so quickly and there has been a lot to learn! I’m going to try and bring my blog up-to-date over the next couple of weeks covering a whole month with each post.

The Sun Chaser Team first met in October. The members come from lots of different years across the school with the youngest member being in Year 10 and the eldest member being in Year 13. The first meeting was a lot of fun as the members got together for the first time and found out which teams they were going to be on. There was lots of discussion about the challenges ahead and everyone was eager to get started.

The following week they split into their respective teams and started working on their own areas of the mission. The Publicity Team covered each meeting by taking photos of the work the different groups were doing and began planning the first fund raising event.

The Education Team started collecting resources for a series of lessons that they will be delivering at their partner primary school. This is Horizon’s first foray into outreach and will help the team identify which elements work best. The plan is to put together a one day programme which will raise aspirations and inspire local Primary School pupils to take a greater interest in STEM subjects.

The Engineering Team wasted no time in getting Arduinos set up and learning to build circuits and write programmes. They quickly picked up the language which is a varient of C/C++ and the flashing lights of their first circuits could be seen across the classroom.

The Modelling Team dived straight into research as their task was to devise a mathematical model which would predict the sunrise, not from the ground, but from 30-35km up in the Stratosphere. There was a lot of reading to do and the mathematics was going to test the limits of their abilities and imaginations.

Being a part of this early stage of the project was a real treat as the atmosphere at each meeting fizzes with excitement.

Horizon: Sun Chaser (and the International Year of Light)

Horizon’s mission for this academic year is called ‘Sun Chaser’ and not only will I be blogging the mission but I’ll be flying on-board! There is a new team this year, so I have lots of names to learn (you can meet them all here).

This year their mission is to capture footage of the Sun’s rise over the horizon of the planet from the Stratosphere. In order to achieve this, they will construct a mathematical model which can predict the time of sunrise from altitude. They’ll also design and build two new probes (names to be announced later). The launches will take place in the dead of night in Wales and will be timed so that as the probes are reaching their peak altitude, the Sun’s disc will just be visible over the horizon. I can’t wait!

Both launches will take place in 2015, the International Year of Light. A celebration of light in all areas of life around the world:

The launches are just one aspect of what the team will be doing this year. They’ll also be trialling an outreach programme in which team members visit St. Mary’s the Mount Catholic School to teach three enriched Science lessons on the topics of ‘The Earth and the Sun’, ‘Our Solar System’ and ‘Horizon – Our Atmosphere’. The team will teach Year 6 pupils who will then feedback what they have learned to the whole school in assembly. St. Mary’s mascot will fly aboard the Sun Chaser probe along with me. The team hopes that this will be the first of many outreach programmes aimed at inspiring Primary aged pupils to take an interest in STEM subjects and Space.

Following the lessons at St. Mary’s the Mount Catholic School the team have been invited to visit the Birmingham Planetarium for a day and I’ll be going with them. During the day they will run a stand in the centre of the Think Tank where we will be meeting with members of the public, talking about this year’s mission and showing footage from the project so far.

It’s going to be another exciting year and it’s difficult to remember at times that Horizon is run by high school pupils.

You can find out more about their adventures through their website:

http://horizon.qmgs.walsall.sch.uk/

Keep up-to-date with the latest from the team on their twitter feed:

Tweets by horizonqmgs

Watch videos from the team on their YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/user/horizonqmgs

My ‘Beat Felix!’ mission diary – Armstrong and Hadfield

Even with exams still going on a few team members are coming along to meetings. Over the past month the team has been working on Armstrong and Hadfield. Work on the flight computers started first with Elizabeth and Isaac sitting down to plan a small redesign. The antenna has to be moved so that it is central on the edge and this means lots of connections and components have to move with it.

I’ve been helping out by testing the new GPS and Radio modules (with support from Mr Smethurst).

Each module has to be tested on the flight computer test bed (which is hung out of the window so that the GPS receives a stronger signal).

All of the modules worked fine and so are ready to be passed to the team members building the new flight computers.

Jay is hard at work on a prototype case for Armstrong. Working with polystyrene is a messy business so I kept my distance (it takes me ages to brush it all out of my fur).

It seems polystyrene takes a while to get off the tongue as well 😉

The case should fit the new flight computers once they are built and brings the total weight of Armstrong to less than 150g! The team seem quietly confident in Armstrong and there is quite a lot of excitement here as the next launch draws close.