Out of this World

The ISS orbits the Earth at nearly 20,000 mph. Image courtesy of NASA.

Following on from Message into Space, I’m proud of four intrepid digital astronauts who assembled a small team to code a program that would run 250 miles high up – in space to be precise. The four Y8 girls took part in a project collaboration between the European Space Agency and the Raspberry Pi Foundation, during an after school Code Club I run.

They worked independently as a team, to complete their mission writing a Python program to log sensor information and display a message to the astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) – pictured above. The European Space Agency confirmed their program ran earlier this year in May and was a success.

I’m proud to witness the early steps undertaken by young pioneers at school; as even the great pioneers like Katherine Johnson undertook some initial steps in their contributions toward space exploration. The astronaut Ron Garan said “We are limited only by our imagination and our will to act.” Computer science really does open the possibilities for an adventurous and creative mind.