Abbeyfield School students get cash boost to compete for top spot in rocket challenge (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)
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Abbeyfield School students get cash boost to compete for top spot in rocket challenge
2:00pm Friday 8th March 2013 in News
Science teacher Jon Pickering, left, and Altran Division director Mike Greenan with Abbeyfield School pupils
Children as young as 13 are already succeeding as rocket scientists.
Abbeyfield School rocket club will compete in a national aerospace rocketry challenge thanks to £1,400 from Altran, a global engineering company supplying to the aerospace sector.
The winners of last year’s challenge got an all expenses paid trip to Nasa in Florida.
The Abbeyfield club’s 15 members, aged 13-16, have been busy building rockets to come up with the perfect design for the competition.
It needs to weigh less than 650 grams and must send a raw hen’s egg to 750ft, to return to Earth intact with a flight time of 48 seconds from launch to land.
Science teacher Jon Pickering said: “This generous sponsorship allows us to buy the required motors and materials to enter into the competition.”
Club member Isobel Wiltshire, 13, is one of six girls in the two-fifths female club. She said: “Girls are stereotyped as not liking that sort of thing but I love maths and science and at last year’s competition half of the teams were girls. I don’t think it’s that unusual now.”
Altran representatives visited the school on Friday to see the Rocket Club in action. Mike Greenan, who leads Altran’s intelligent system division in the UK, said: “The UK Aerospace Youth Rocketry Challenge is a terrific opportunity for these children to quite literally become rocket scientists at an early age. We’ll be right behind them as the competition progresses.”
Abbeyfield will compete against up to 80 schools, the final 20 qualifiers to compete on May 8 in Leicestershire. The winners go to the Paris international airshow to compete against the Amer-ican, French and Japanese winning teams for the all-expenses paid aerospace trip.
It is the fourth year they have entered and there has been an upward trend from coming 15th in their first attempt to coming third last year.
As part of the deal the club also needs to raise £700 itself.
