These Ontario kids had their computer code sent to space
⭐️HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW⭐️
Four kids from Ontario wrote computer code that was used on the International Space Station.
They worked for months on a code that could calculate the speed of the space station during orbit.
Part of their project involved taking photos of Earth from space.
Read on to find out how you can get into coding yourself.⬇️⬇️⬇️
Four kids from Ontario are celebrating after the experiment they ran on the International Space Station (ISS) went off without a hitch.
The group — who are all 11 and 12 years old — wrote computer code that allowed a special computer aboard the ISS to calculate the station's speed as it orbited the Earth.
It was part of the 2024-25 Astro Pi challenge — an annual contest run by the European Space Agency (ESA) in collaboration with the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
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The Astro Pi challenge
The challenge asks kids from around the world to submit computer code to be used on the Astro Pi — a type of educational computer specifically made for space.
Computer code is written using specific text-based languages — like Python or HTML, for example — that give instructions to a computer to get it to perform a specific task.
Participants in the challenge are asked to write computer code to conduct one of two experiments:
The Mission Zero challenge — a beginner-level task that asks kids to instruct the Astro Pi to take a specific measurement and draw a pixelated picture on the LED screen for the astronauts aboard the ISS to see.
The Mission Space Lab challenge — a more advanced challenge where students use a more complicated coding language to calculate the speed of the ISS as it orbits the Earth, in whichever creative way they see fit.
This year, 68 teams from Canada were accepted to run their code for the Mission Space Lab challenge and more than 300 were accepted for the Mission Zero challenge.
Ontario kids get involved
One of the teams to try out the Mission Space Lab challenge was a team named Astrovel from Scarborough, Ontario.
The team was made up of Theshmika Kasthurisinghe Danawardanalage, 12, Krishna Waran, 11, Hana Mohideen, 12, and Abdhul Ghafar, 11.
Krishna, who has been coding since he was four years old, said his team got to work back in January after finding out about the challenge from their teacher.
'My goal is to be a NASA engineer one day, so it seemed like a great opportunity,' he told CBC Kids News.
The four team members are all part of Scratch Coding for Kids — an after-school program that teaches kids about coding and robotics — as well as the Kids for Kids Toronto Coding Club.
Krishna said they've all learned to love coding over the years.
'When you get good enough at coding to be confident, it gets really fun. When I work hard to code something and it actually works, it makes me super happy.'
From January to March, they met several times a week with a coding mentor, dedicating dozens of hours to learn, develop and test their code for the mission.
How did their code work?
After submitting their final code in March, the team soon found out a fe weeks later that it was given flight status, meaning it was accepted to be tested on the ISS in April.
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'When I got home and my mom showed me the email, I was shocked. We were so happy and had a little party to celebrate,' said Krishna.
To calculate the speed of the ISS, their code asked the computer's camera to take two different pictures of Earth at two different times.
It then asked the computer to analyze Earth's geographical features in order to determine where exactly the ISS was located when each photo was taken.
From there, they could determine how far the ISS had travelled between the time the first and second photos were taken.
Based on how much time went by between the first and second photos and how much distance the ISS had travelled in that time, they were able to calculate its speed.
The kids determined the ISS was travelling 10.5 kilometers per second.
Although the actual speed the ISS was travelling was 7.7 kilometers per second, their calculation was still one of the closest of the many kids who entered.
The ESA sent the team a certificate congratulating them for their successful code.
'We were so excited and it makes us want to do more of these challenges,' said Krishna.
Want to get into coding?
Layne Turner is one of the managers of Code Club, a Canadian non-profit organization that helps create free coding programs for kids in their communities, like the Kids for Kids Toronto Coding Club.
'I'm so proud that the team was successful in this,' she told CBC Kids News. 'I think it's so amazing that young people can get their coding run on the ISS.'
She said kids in Canada can contact Code Club if they want to start their own coding club at their school, library or local community hub.
Alana Bartolini, an education outreach co-ordinator with the ESA, said that the Mission Zero challenge is a great way for kids who want to get their hand at coding.
'If you can type on a keyboard, then you can probably do mission zero,' she told CBC Kids News. 'It's really a step-by-step program that can give you the very first initial knowledge in programming.'
She said kids can get started by visiting the Astro Pi website and having a parent, teacher or mentor help them get started.
'Through our challenges, kids not only learn coding, but teamwork, data collection and the scientific method,' she said.
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