During July the Space Academy ran two ‘Roadshow’ events with schools from Derby City and Wellingborough in Northamptonshire.  The three day event saw students participate in a physics masterclass where they learnt how physics is applied and used in space science, including rocket launch velocities and the effect of gravity.  The culmination of the masterclass is the construction of a comet nucleus using a number of ingredients including dry ice and water which helps to illustrate the threat comets may have when impacting a planet or that they may have been responsible for bring life to planets.

The second day allowed students to explore the National Space Centre galleries, experience ‘We Are Astronomers’, a full dome planetarium show and take part in a Challenger Mission.  A Challenger Mission is a simulated space mission where students take the role of mission controllers and astronauts on a space craft to complete a mission to launch a probe to a moon of Mars.  The mission was made more challenging through the introduction of various emergencies, from high humidity levels to a failing oxygen supply.  The students needed to response to these emergencies finding solution and showing immense team work and communication skills to ensure that the primary mission objectives were completed.On the final day the students got to experience indoor skydiving at the Airkix vertical wind tunnel.  This a real challenge which all students leapt at (some literally!) and successfully completed by understanding basic aerodynamics.  A Roadshow participant said “there is nothing I did not like about the trip, everything was cool and I need to do something similar again”