Ross High School, along with Musselburgh Grammar School, was lucky enough to be nominated as a participating school in a series of Astronaut visits which took place across Scotland on Wednesday 19th September.
This was part of the 20th Association of Space Explorers (ASE) Planetary Congress which was held in Scotland and involved over 90 astronauts visiting Scottish secondary schools. Ross High was visited by Jeff Hoffman and David Leestma, both having been in space on a number of occasions.
The visit involved all S3, S5 and S6 pupils. The astronauts took two sessions in the Assembly Hall – one for S3 and the other for S5/6. These sessions involved a presentation by both gentlemen on their backgrounds and how they became NASA astronauts. Both sessions ended with a question and answer session. Pupils asked some very interesting questions including the much anticipated “How do you go to the toilet?” and “Have you ever seen an alien?”.
In addition the Higher Physics class attended a session with Jeff and David. With 20 pupils, this was much more informal and enabled the pupils to ask some very personal questions with regard to the experiences of our two visitors when they landed on the space station and also what happened to them when they landed back on Earth.
The pupils involved really enjoyed the visit and many members of staff spoke about it for days afterwards. It was almost overwhelming to actually speak to two men who had been in space!
Mrs R Shuttleworth
PT Curriculum (Work & Enterprise)
Ross High School