Primary school kids launch planes into space

At the end of June a team of students aged 7 to 11 from Bailey’s Court Primary School, in Gloucestershire, in collaboration with space engineers from SEA Ltd, launched ‘paper space planes’ from a helium balloon into the stratosphere. The whole thing was caught on a camera which parachuted back to earth safely, some 70 miles away in Oxfordshire.

This was a great opportunity for gifted children to engage with practical physics and engineering. Over four sessions they got to help design the planes, balloon, parachutes and tail fins, and learnt about all aspects of flight, the atmosphere and space.

Picture: Dave Betts