Students from Soham Village College boldly went were no students have gone before – right to the edge of space!

Ely Standard: The balloon was launched from Kennett Primary SchoolThe balloon was launched from Kennett Primary School (Image: Archant)

To celebrate the end of the summer term, science students planned and launched a mission to near space, with the help of a specially designed Rasperrby Pi computer,

At about 11.30am on the last day of term, students gathered at Kennett Primary School – renamed mission control for the day – to launch their balloon on a two-hour flight into the stratosphere.

The balloon’s ‘payload’ was a small Raspberry Pi computer and camera which collected plenty of scientific data for the students to analyse.

Teacher James Robinson, said: “During its flight students received telemetry data over radio waves and almost live images beamed down from the device.

“This enabled us to track the payload with great accuracy and plot it’s position on a live map, all went to plan and we recovered the payload near Eye in Suffolk.

“We are still sifting through our data and images - of which we have lots - and hope to be able to use the data for some real science next year.”