Life On Mars

Just before half-term Mrs James, Head of ICT & Computing, took two teams of Year 9 computing pupils to the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Didcot to tackle some physical computing challenges in honour of Ada Lovelace Day. The scenario they were given was to fix mission critical systems on a Mars lander that had been damaged by a solar flare. They were challenged to build a temperature sensor, a distance sensor and a communication system using Arduinos and electronic components which they coded using C++. The results were impressive, and the pupils demonstrated excellent teamwork and resilience. The group also had an opportunity to tour the state-of-the art datacentre which houses a third of a petabyte of critical data. The day was rounded off by careers talk by a recent graduate, whose excellent advice was "Stay curious and keep asking questions," a sentiment that very much echoes our ethos here at KES!