Callington NASA trip

Callington Sixth Form students have spent an eventful twelve days in the USA

The recent trip to America with the NASA Students has been a resounding success. Charlotte Kirsch, Jack Taylor, David Collard and Andrew Speare all from Year 13 were the candidates selected from the year long process.  The four students are pictured above with Mr Mike Grocott, Director of the Callington Space Centre, in front of the iconic NASA sign at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.

Amber Gell, from Lockheed Martin, hosted the students in Texas giving them unrivalled access to the Equipment Development laboratory at the Space Division in Houston.

It was not just about engineering on the trip, one day was spent building air rockets with the children of Pear Hall Elementary School, Charlie's Spanish skills certainly helped on the day.

After spending time in Houston, it was down to Florida.  Here the students attended talks at Brevard Planetarium as well as a lecture from Andy Siskol, Senior Engineer for the Discovery Shuttle, which was due to launch the day after they left Florida.  The evening was spent listening and dining with engineers from both NASA and United Space Alliance.  A special guest of honour was a past student of Callington Grammar School who many years ago left Callington to achieve a degree from Rice University in Texas.  Russell Kirsch talked to the students on how he went from Callington to be the Vice President of a successful Company based in Florida.

Our links with Cocoa Beach High School have been enhanced after a day spent with the students resulting in an opportunity for an exchange of IB Students.

On the final day our students won a series of awards from the Astronaut Training facility.  The simulators used are the same as those the astronauts use for training and so ...

Congratulations to Andrew Speare who landed the Space Shuttle with 0 ft error !!!

Dave Collard docked the Shuttle successfully to the International Space station at the fastest rate recorded by International Students (1.5ft per second) and finally the team including Jack Taylor won an award for the best structure completed in both cost and strength.

The live blog they made is still up for reading at Space Education Adventures.  Any businesses wanting to get involved in this successful project please contact Mike Grocott at the Space Centre (phone 01579 386124 or email spacecentre@callington.cc)