A space weather experiment designed and built by four Year 10 students at KEVICC in Totnes will be taking off in April 2009. The payload will ascend to the upper atmosphere on a balloon and touch the edge of space before descending back to earth with the data it has collected. The aim of the experiment is to photograph the aurora as it appears above our atmosphere. This can help us understand and predict changes in solar radiation and space weather.
The students are one of just four teams in the UK to reach the final round of the Spaceflight competition run by the University of Cambridge. After finding out they had succeeded in getting through to the final round they immediately started to develop the payload.
Scitec Instruments from Redruth in Cornwall has donated UV sensors, which include a filter to produce data relevant to human skin.
