A cosmic classroom in Cambridge
On Tuesday 2 February schools around the country and, in fact, as far afield as Kuwait and Monaco tuned in to a live video link-up with British astronaut Major Tim Peake – who is currently spending six months on the International Space Station (ISS). Our Year 5 pupils – whose current Creative Curriculum topic is space – were delighted to take part in the event and to have the opportunity to see their learning come to life.
To prepare for the link-up the girls thought of some impressive questions which they wanted Major Peake to answer, which ranged from ‘do you get travel sick in space’ and ‘how do you become an astronaut?’, to ‘what can you see around you?’, ‘what do you eat in space?’ and ‘what did you think when Colonel Tim Kopra got water in his helmet during the spacewalk?’.
The event was held at the World Museum Liverpool, and space medicine scientist and TV personality, Dr Kevin Fong, hosted the live classroom – entertaining and educating the children before, during and after the live link-up with the ISS. Dr Fong shared some of the history of space exploration and the ISS itself with viewers, explaining that it has taken 15 years of launching people into space to create the ISS. The space station is now the size of a football pitch, mostly due to the number of solar panels used, houses six astronauts, and is the base for scientific and space exploration research. Since Junior School pupils have been alive, there has been someone in space at all times and travel to Mars is likely to happen within our Junior School pupils’ lifetimes! Only 500 people have travelled to space, and Major Peake is the first British astronaut to do so in the last 25 years – and the first to ever spacewalk. The ISS orbits the earth every 90 minutes, and relies on the earth’s gravity to stay in orbit, only managing not to travel towards earth thanks to the immense speed of travel.
Dr Fong encouraged the school-children in the audience and viewing remotely to do a number of activities, such as touching their toes and spinning around, so that when the link-up was established the children could compare their experiences with Tim’s.
Having launched on 15 December 2015, Major Peake has now been on the ISS for seven weeks, and as soon as he was being broadcast live (with a significant time-delay, due to the signal travelling from the ISS, to the TEDRA satellite, via a number of locations in the US including Mission Control in Houston, Texas, to the World Museum in Liverpool and then out to the online audience, such as St Mary’s Junior School, Cambridge) he seemed pleased to show the children some of his best ‘space tricks’ and answer their questions.
Tim was asked to touch his toes and spin around and, as expected, it was a very different experience than for the pupils in the audience. Touching his toes made Tim perform a number of backwards somersaults, and spinning around led to Tim losing balance and drifting off – having no gravity to hold him down. One of the most fun parts of the link-up was when Major Peake showed the students what happens with water in space. He explained that drinking water has to be stored in sealed pouches – you can’t have a glass of water or run a tap, as the molecules of water form bubbles and then float around without gravity! After showing the children the floating bubbles of water, Major Peake added a fizzy vitamin tablet to one big bubble, and the pupils watched as the bubble grew, and fizzed, but remained a floating bubble.
Pupils also learned that: your heart pumps slower in space as less gravity makes it easier to pump the blood around your body (and so regularly exercising is vital to ensure your heart doesn’t shrink from working less hard than on earth); food tastes less strong because your sense of smell (which contributes to the ability to taste) is restricted in space; Tim’s favourite button is the one to open the door to outer space; sleeping is hard – you have to pin yourself down in your sleeping bag, and tie your pillow to your head with a belt – because everything tends to float away!
Dr Fong explained that to become an astronaut you have to work really hard; at school, at university, and beyond, and then when you’re 30 or 40 you can apply to the space programme. Major Peake said that being in space is “like playing in a great playground of weightlessness”, and at the end of the hour our Year 5 pupils were asked for their reactions to what they had seen. Overwhelmingly, the response from many of the girls was “I’m jealous! I want to be up there in the space station!”. Perhaps, one of the next British astronauts in space could be one of our current Year 5 pupils.
See highlights from the recording of Major Peake’s video link-up here.