Ten of our year 11 students have designed and built a weather space balloon which despite harsh conditions with strong gusts of wind and at times heavy downpours of rain, was successfully launched from Harris Church of England Academy Sports Field this morning at 9.35am.

The balloon will hopefully reach heights in excess of 30-35 kilometres. The attached equipment will video its ascent and decent along the way.

A GPS tracker will enable the students to track the balloon in the academy’s minibus and hopefully recover it when it parachutes back down to Earth.

We are only the second school in the UK to attempt an experiment of this kind with the full support of the National Space Centre.

Harris Space Academy Video