With special guests Professor Craig Underwood and Dr Lucinda King, nearly 7000 students across the United Kingdom joined our second series of STEM with Wings workshops. The theme was Space Junk, the ever-increasing man-made rubbish in-earth orbit which is having an impact on our everyday lives, and the workshops offered participants a chance to find out what is being done to tackle this huge problem.
STEM with Wings got to grips with Space Junk. Students learnt that it can be enormous (like the 8 tonne satellite ENVISAT which is out of control in earth orbit), medium sized (missing gloves and tools from space missions), or minute, all the way down to tiny flecks of paint that have come off space craft.
When Space Junk collides with working satellites, down on Earth we can encounter problems with things we rely on from GPS and to internet access. But this isn’t the only problem, when satellites collide they can break apart, creating even more Space Junk, an exponentially growing problem.
Professor Underwood and Dr King shared the work they have been doing to clean up space and the tactics they are trialling to capture space junk and bring it back to earth to be recycled. Our expert guests guided students to design their own space-clean-up machines – a selection of which can be seen below:
Interactive challenges, exclusive videos showing the trials in space and an opportunity to ask the expert questions made for a highly enjoyable and popular event, reflected in teachers’ feedback:
It was extremely interesting and most engaging. Great slides, speakers and pacing.
All of the children were engaged and excited about the idea of inventing a ‘space hoover’ that could clear the debris and protect our planet. There were more questions than we could possibly have imagined, not just about the workshop but space in general (we are studying space in Summer 1). It was amazing for the adults too as we did not realise how much ‘junk’ is actually orbiting Earth. Thank you for lighting the spark.
Thanks to the generosity of our funder, RAF Youth STEM, two schools won a fantastic in-person visit from the RAF Youth STEM.
If you would like to attend the next STEM with Wings event coming up in 2025 contact STEM@big-ideas.org to be kept up to date with the next school opportunities.