School pupils experience space science at UCL

A group of secondary school students have designed their own space missions during a new week-long work experience programme at the UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL). The week, which ran in July, was a unique opportunity for sixth form pupils from London and the South East to experience a range of different research fields and learn more about the tools used by space scientists in their day-to-day work. The pupils attended a variety of presentations ranging from discussions about the practicalities of designing, creating and engineering instruments for space to the possible discovery of lakes, waves and rivers on Titan, Saturn's largest moon. Daily workshops using real data from recent research discoveries were designed to give a flavour of the range of possible work in the field. These included: modeling and simulating the evolution of star clusters using Cassini spacecraft data to observe water plumes on Saturn's icy moon Enceladus tracking sub-storms in observations of Earth's aurora (or Northern Lights) predicting and observing the propagation of Coronal Mass Ejections (large solar storms) through the solar system - and understanding how dangerous these can be for both astronauts and satellites - The course has inspired me to study physics at university and given me a unique project to talk about at s. Edward Offer, 17 Edward Offer, 17, from Tiffin school in Kingston-on-Thames, said: "Planning the manned mission to Mars was an inspiring and fascinating experience because I believe this could be achieved in my lifetime.