PREVIEW

WORDS BYLINE: Madison Rolfe

Pupils in Newbury have completed an ‘out of this world’ mission – in what is thought to be the first primary school to send its mascot to space.

On Friday, July 3, pupils, parents and staff at Speenhamland Primary School in Newbury watched in awe as Trodon, a 3D printed dragon and the school’s mascot, was sent into space attached to a high-altitude helium balloon – with the aim of reaching the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere.

After a quick countdown and the all-clear was given, the dragon was released from the school field, and could be seen lifting into the airspace above Newbury as it embarked on a two-hour journey to reach 100,000ft – that’s three times higher than a commercial jet flies at.

Attached to Trodon and travelling into space with him were more than 250 pieces of artwork, each drawn individually by pupils at the school, ranging from video game characters, to rockets and K-pop bands.

The structure of the ‘space-craft’ itself was pretty simple; attached to a triangular payload structure was Trodon, accompanied by a GoPro camera, a professional satellite tracker, a scientific instrumentation package and a battery insulated with a chemical hand warmer, to keep it warm once the temperature plummeted in space.

All of this would be lifted above the Earth by a polymer helium balloon – which expands to double its size on Earth as it reaches altitude.

According to the Civil Aviation Authority, Speenhamland is the first primary school on its records to have sent something into space, and it is waiting on Guinness World Records to officially confirm this.

The idea to send Trodon to space had been more than a year in the making by staff and the PTA, and was the brainchild of PTA chair and parent Josh Knight, who initially raised the idea as both a fundraising opportunity and something to inspire children beyond the classroom.

“We were sat in the staff room talking, and they said the three ideas we had done before; a cake sale, a coffee morning, and a school disco night,” said Mr Knight, who has a son at the school.

“So I just said - why don’t we do something outlandish, I think we can send something into space?

“The headteacher, Mrs Lowrie, laughed, at first – and then went, ‘Really? You’re serious?’”

From this, an idea was born – consisting of many late nights of research and planning for parents and staff, to see if their stratospheric dreams could be made into reality.

“I’ve always been fascinated by space,” said Mr Knight, “and it feels like one of those things that can be so inspiring for young kids, because there are some amazing things that people don’t realise – here in Newbury we live closer to space than the seaside (in a straight line), and it feels so inaccessible – the only place you see it is in the cinema.

“But in reality, there are ways to explore those things that feel so limitless and distant to children, and I think anytime we do something different and explorative – the look on the children’s face is always amazing, and we desperately wanted to do something they could walk away with.”

As it developed, Mr Knight quickly realised that although it would be difficult, there was a very real possibility of sending something to space – and it came with a multitude of risks.

After a year of planning, hoards of paperwork, and authorisation from the Civil Aviation Authority which only arrived at 11pm the night before take-off, the day had finally come to launch.

Mr Knight prepared to tell the children there was every possibility that Trodon might not make it: “I had to be prepared to say that something had gone wrong or that the balloon had burst early – that was where most of the effort went, was having fail safe after fail safe just to make sure we didn’t disappoint any of them.”

Mr Knight completed a practice dry-run, which had a safety line on it, and checked that all the equipment would successfully lift a few hundred metres, along with a few calculations.

“That was nerve-wracking,” he said, “because if that had failed, I’m not quite sure what we would’ve done.”

Luckily, both the practice and real launch were successful, and without a hitch, Trodon made his way into space, reaching his ‘apogee’, the furthest point on his journey, at around an hour and 37 minutes into flight.

At this point, the helium balloon atop of the craft bursts into pieces, as designed to burst at a precise diameter, and sent Trodon hurtling back down to Earth at high-speed.

Many of the children watched this moment for the first time in a special assembly by Mr Knight on July 17.

Upon watching the explosion, the Speenhamland Primary School hall erupted into cheers as nearly 300 pupils watched the moment their beloved mascot began his journey back home, with every single drawing still intact.

“I think I’m going to remember that for life.” said Mr Knight, “that was unbelievably moving, that’s all that really mattered to us - it was for the children.

“We wanted it to be inspiring, and if even only one child is inspired by that to pursue a career in science, to be excited by it, to even just think I can do something I'm dreaming of, that’s all that matters.

“To hear them all screaming, laughing and amazed, it makes it all worth it.”

It was at this moment, as Trodon could be seen against the curve of the earth, that Mr Knight realised all of his hard work had paid off.

“It was just incredible.

“There’s something indescribable about taking something you’ve only ever read in books or you know the theory of, but to say something we’ve built with our hands and sent up there has proven it, I’ve seen the curve, that’s an addictive feeling.”

Despite the GoPro filming every step of the journey back to Earth, Mr Knight could only track Trodon’s whereabouts using the tracker strapped to the craft, hoping that it would give an accurate landing location.

“We were running predictions constantly, and there was a point a week and a half before the launch, that if we’d launched it on that day it would’ve landed in Waitrose car park – which would’ve been perfect!”

Thankfully, using the technology Mr Knight and the crew were able to track down where they thought Trodon would land – two hours away from Newbury, a town named Newick in East Sussex.

So they began their road-trip to Sussex, all the while receiving calls from other aircraft to make sure they didn’t collide with Trodon mid-flight.

The authorisation involved getting direct clearance from other vehicles through the Civil Aviation Authority, which Mr Knight said was ‘unexpected’.

“We were regularly getting phone calls from 747s, light aircraft flying over the Newbury airspace – asking, ‘can you tell us your flight trajectory?’

“So we said, we’re a primary school sending a toy dragon into space, and you hear the pilots go, ‘okay… Roger.’, and off they go.”

The tracker had pin-pointed Trodon’s landing location to fields on the outskirt on Newick, but when they arrived, Mr Knight and his son Jack, took a while to locate the craft.

As the Sun set, the pair trawled the field in hopes of finding the craft as they were quickly losing daylight.

It was in the middle of a farmer’s field that they eventually found Trodon – untouched, and with all of its pieces still intact.

It was watching the footage back hours later that Mr Knight realised just how successful the experiment had been: “I was on tenterhooks right up until I turned on the gopro and saw that it had worked, because there were always points that something could fail, the battery could’ve failed, the gopro could’ve had the lens cap on.

“But suddenly seeing Trodon going to the curve of the Earth, I have to admit that’s when I shed a tear and suddenly the adrenaline stopped, and you think ‘We’ve done it’.”

Mr Knight also realised later on that Trodon’s landing point was only 80 metres away from the unauthorised flying space of Gatwick airport, and if they had been any closer, the airport would have been forced to shut temporarily.

Luckily this wasn’t the case, and Trodon has now been returned to pupils at Speenhamland, much to their excitement.