Catmose College Launch

Catmose College is an Academy school in Leicester. On the 13th June, the committee of the newly formed Spaceflight Society travelled up to the school for a day of outreach activities to demonstrate some of the key points of launching a balloon and to promote physics at University. On the day, the children made parachutes for eggs, crushed coke cans and learnt about different wavelengths of light using an infrared camera.

Then, on Monday 1st July, we returned to the school for the launch. Alongside temperature and tracking sensors, the payload contained two Contour Roam 2 cameras. One pointing out horizontally and the other at an angle pointing about 45 degrees downward, between the horizon and the ground. The school also provided us with their cat and mouse knitted mascots. The cat was attached to the front of the car and the mouse was put into the field of view of the angled camera. It is appropriate here to thank the University of Southampton’s Physics Department’s Outreach team for supplying one of our chase cars. The majority of the school came out to join us on the school field to watch the launch which was a success.

 

After a few hours of driving around the back roads of east England, the payload landed safely in a parsnip field around Huntingdon.
It was a very successful event as the first official launch of the University of Southampton’s Spaceflight Society. Below is the video the school made on the launch

Links

More photos can be found here

http://www.catmosecollege.com/news/science-week-balloon-launch

http://www.catmosecollege.com/news/balloon-launch-arial-images