Our virtues of ‘endeavour and collaborate’ and ‘inspire and challenge curious minds’ were put on show this weekend when Tess in Fourth Form (Y8) and Ishaan in Lower Two (Year 5) took part in the NASA Space Apps Challenge, a hackathon run in a number of locations across the globe.
Hosted by the Met Office, and run by Tech Exeter it’s a two day challenge where teams form to take on one of 18 challenges set by NASA.
With 160 people registered, Tess joined a team on Saturday morning looking at how data from NASA could be used to track shark movement. The team built a model to track sea temperature and plankton movement and Tess brought her creative flair in building models for the challenge. Tess didn’t know any of the team members at the start. Her brother, Max (M5) joined on Saturday but had Ten Tors training on Sunday so couldn’t complete the challenge.
Ishaan was part of a seven-member team (four adults and three children) dedicated to creating a multilingual story aimed at primary school children to raise awareness about the impact of solar flares from the Sun on Earth. He was an incredibly proactive contributor. He suggested the unanimously accepted team name and mascot, ‘Space Cucumbers,’ and, perhaps most creatively, developed a fascinating storyline: the Sun eats spicy food, which makes him burp flares! These flares then cause the Northern Lights, electricity grid blackouts, and aircraft navigation to get scrambled. Ishaan conceptualized and drew the artwork for three of the team’s ten presentation slides and enthusiastically presented the story alongside his teammates to the judging panel, which included the Director of the Met Office, the Director of the UK Space Agency, and the CEO of Tech Exeter.
18 teams presented on Sunday afternoon and Tess’ team even came second! We’re so incredibly proud of both our representatives and all of the others who took part.
Their projects will now go forward for global judging.
