Croydon girls aim for orbit with self-built satellite

"A south London school is on track to become the first all-girls school in the world to send a satellite into space. The independent Croydon High School in south London, has designed and built a working satellite which they aim to launch into low-Earth orbit in the next couple of years. They hope the plan, called Mission Pegasus, will inspire girls to take on science, technology, engineering and maths subjects, known as STEM, where females are still under-represented."

"In 2023, members of the school's Stargazers Club launched and retrieved two experimental high-altitude weather balloons that reached the edge of space. Kaweng, 14, said the group hopes the satellite will be able to take readings of different wavelengths in the atmosphere. She told Politics London: "From this we can tell what different chemical compositions are in the atmosphere, which can also tell us the quality of air and this can contribute to climate science.""

""There is a lack of girls, there's an imbalance in gender in the STEM field, particularly in space science too. And I had a love for space science from a very, very young age and I've been very passionate about it. Trying to show girls and trying to pave the pathway for them. To show that something that you think is impossible is actually possible, and showing them the means, and how's, and how we go about, and how we get to that destination, is very, very important.""

A south London independent school, Croydon High School, has designed and built a working satellite with plans to launch it into low-Earth orbit within the next couple of years. The initiative, called Mission Pegasus, aims to inspire girls to study STEM subjects where females remain under-represented. In 2023, the Stargazers Club launched and recovered two experimental high-altitude weather balloons that reached the edge of space. Students plan for the satellite to take atmospheric readings across different wavelengths to determine chemical composition and air quality, contributing to climate science. The project is guided by the head of physics in partnership with the University of Bath and supports students' aspirations in astrophysics.

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