Marlborough St Mary’s Year 6 pupil, Henry Mann aged 11, has successfully completed the European Astro Pi Challenge for pupils aged 14 and under and written a computer program which sent a message to the astronauts on the International Space Station. The message was read by the astronauts on May 18 at 9.47 and Henry received a satellite image of where the space station was when his message was read.
The Challenge required participants to write a program that took a humidity reading on board the international Space station and to communicate it to the astronauts with a personalised message that would be displayed for 30 seconds.
Marlborough St Mary’s teacher, Kath Black, told Marlborough.news, “We are delighted and proud that a student at Marlborough St Mary’s has sent his message into space. Henry fulfilled all the criteria of the challenge which was extremely difficult to do. He was able to use Python programming language and construct the program to last 30 seconds. It had to be 30 seconds exactly and Henry had to keep going back to his algorithm and debug it. If it hadn’t been exactly 30 seconds then it would not have been read by the astronauts.”
Henry said, “It was cool and amazing to have a chance to do something like this. I really enjoyed it.”
Henry has been an enthusiastic member of St Mary’s after school coding club since he was in Year 3 and aged 7. Kath Black said, “Henry has an aptitude for programming. He quickly progressed through basic programming skills and has learnt how to use Python. Marlborough St Mary’s is keen to encourage students to develop technical skills which are so important in today’s world.”
Full-time youth worker – Wiltshire Youth For Christ – Marlborough
