MARSBalloon: Woodlawn Primary School pupils' science experiment bound for space flight

Pupils at Woodlawn Primary School are taking part in the MARSBalloon project 2024 with global space manufacturer, Thales Alenia Space.

Children aged between 9-11 in the school's Jigsaw Room chose to send cress seeds and yeast into the atmosphere in a bid to assess the effects of the journey on the material.

The MARSBalloon will carry over 150 student experiments to an altitude of 30km, more than twice the height of commercial airliners and where they will be above 99 percent of Earth’s atmosphere.

Along the way they will experience conditions very similar to the surface of Mars including temperatures of -50°C, pressures 1/100th that of sea level and an increased radiation dose.

Class teacher, Kathryn Edwards explained: "One of our teaching assistants, Mrs Irwin, saw a press release from Thales, Belfast and she passed on the information knowing that the children would love the idea.

"We talked about what it would be like to be in space and the things that astronauts needed - food, water, clothes and shelter. There was a class discussion about which of these things would they miss the most if they went to space and food came out on top!

"After a lot of talking about what food would be like in space and freeze dried foods mentioned, we decided to test what happens to a sandwich.

"A ready made sandwich might go off on its way to Mars, but we could test to see if the astronauts could bake bread and grow cress and actually make sandwiches in space. We have kept the same weight of yeast and cress seeds in our classroom; when the yeast and cress that have gone into space are sent back to us, we will plant the seeds and use the yeast to make bread. We can then compare the 'earth' yeast to the 'space' yeast."

The innovative project, meanwhile, has helped spark the children's imaginations about the sort of things that could be sent to space. "The children think that the yeast that we send to space might not make bread as well as the yeast that stayed in the classroom," Kathryn added.

"They also think that the cress seeds that have gone to space might not grow as tall as the seeds that stayed on earth.

The MARSBalloon launch is due to take place in May/June, with the launch window weather dependent.

The school is planning to keep an eye on the progress of the project via Twitter, Kathryn said: "Thales will return our experiment to us as soon after launch as possible. There will be at least two cameras attached to the balloon throughout the mission. We can look at a summary of the camera footage on the MARSBalloon website soon after the flight."

Open to any school in the UK, the MARSBalloon project aims to test the response of electronics, materials, plants and even food to the conditions outside of a future Mars base, helping future explorers to prepare for the strange and hostile environment.