Contribution by Ms Mirjam de Bruin
On Friday 24 September, PYP 6 students set off by bus to Noordwijk for a special mission inside the Space Expo. The Space Expo is Europe’s first permanent space exhibition. Space Expo is also the visitors’ centre for ESA in the Netherlands, the European Space Agency’s largest technical establishment.
One class started with the tour in the museum while the other class started with a lesson on what it requires to become an astronaut. Dutch astronaut André Kuipers and author Sander Koenen took the students, by a set of video clips, on an amazing tour of the museum. The students learned all about space and space travel and discovered what it means to be an astronaut.
One of the highlights was André Kuipers’ original Soyuz capsule, in which André Kuipers made his journey to the International Space Station (ISS). Other highlights were the ability to walk in a model of the International Space Station and the life-size model of the moon landing. All students received a mission toolkit that contained assignments and experiments to carry out during the mission at the museum
During the group lesson, the students learned that it requires hard work both physically as mentally and years of study and training to become an astronaut. One of the other important things is, that you need to be able to work together. At the end of the lesson, the students were asked to build a rocket with Lego blocks within 5 minutes. It was nice to see how they collaborated and came up with some interesting designs. All in all, we had a great day at the Space Expo!
