Wirral school pupils capture images of Earth from space

Pupils from a Wirral school have taken pictures of Earth from space with help from a scientist who works with Nasa.

Children from Bedford Drive Primary School in Rock Ferry designed a weather balloon complete with video cameras, GPS and telephone, with help from Wirral-born scientist Dr Steve Croft.

The cameras captured images from 100,000 ft up in near space before parachuting back to earth.

The images from the experiment July have just been shown to the pupils.

Head teacher Rebecca Bridges said: "We were so excited to be involved in this project.

"The children skyped Dr Croft to find out about his job and he helped them to then plan and make the weather balloon."

The experiment by year six pupils was part of a six-week science and technology project with Dr Croft, who went to school in Wirral.

The school also worked with Alan Thompson from Hi-impact, a ICT education consultancy firm.

He said: "Technically it was a real challenge. With Dr Croft's expertise we were able to design a balloon which would get to near space - about 100,000ft high (about 30.5km).

"Dr Croft suggested adding a tracking device and a parachute to make sure the balloon came back safely and also including a telephone so we could call whoever found it - which is exactly what happened."

The balloon was released on 3 July and was found later that day by Andrea Vaughan-Jones and Dave Roberts. They were driving in Bangor on Dee, north-east Wales, when they saw the balloon land.

The children were able to track where the balloon had landed and spoke to the finders via the onboard telephone.

Over four hours of HD footage was downloaded by Hi-impact and presented to the pupils on Monday.