Sandwick Junior High school is one of 8 schools in Shetland that took part in the National Spaceport Competition.

This is what their youngster got up to.

 

Primary 6/7 at Sandwick Junior High School enjoyed launching their learning through the Lockheed Martin Spaceport Competition.

They learned about what space does for us all in terms of GPS and satellite television, the UK launch sites, including our very own Shetland site, and took on the role of Spaceport design engineers, considering design trade-offs and constraints. It was really important to our pupils to consider environmental impacts as we have also been studying Climate Change this term in preparation for COP26.

P6 pupils found it really interesting to hear about the challenges astronauts had to go through when training: they go up in a plane until at zero gravity and floating. That would be good to experience. Although some didn’t really fancy a trip to space, they might be interested in a career designing rockets, spacesuits or other things needed for trips into space.

A P6 pupil learned that you can launch space craft horizontally or vertically, she had always though they only went vertically.

P7 pupils thought very carefully about the site design for a Spaceport and the different needs. A launch pad is needed for a vertical launch but a runway is needed for a horizontal  launch. This  group had to consider the different areas in their design and where to put things as space was limited and sometimes it cost more if you had to build on uneven ground.

A couple of the P7 pupils found there was a lot of information to take in and would have liked it if the staff involved had been able to visit the class to help them understand even better.

We look forward to learning more as the Spaceport development grows within Unst.

Visit the schools website to find out more about what the learners at Sandwick have been up to.