Three sixth form students have attended the United Space School. But they didn’t go to the USA because it had to be held virtually for the second time due to the pandemic.

Anna Cregeen, David Cowin and Winona Reese Dalugdugan won their places on the scholarship program, which have been awarded by local satellite company Mansat for 21 years.

It involved two weeks of working online with other students from more than 20 countries around the world, with support from NASA scientists and astronauts, to plan a mission to an asteroid.

Run by the Foundation for International Space Education (FISE), it would normally take place at the physical space school in Houston, Texas - where NASA’s Mission Control centre is located.

The three 17-year-olds were presented with certificates marking their achievement by Education Minister Dr Alex Allinson at the Department of Education, Sport and Culture headquarters.

Anna, who studies at King William’s College, said that her highlight of the experience was being able to speak to celebrity astronaut Chris Hadfield during a question and answer session, describing this as ’incredible, just amazing’.

’I was tempted to ask him what his favourite David Bowie song was, but I thought it was kind of obvious!’

Hadfield is known for performing Space Oddity with a car on the International Space Station.

She explained that her team was focused specifically on mining water from the asteroid Ceres, which ’can be used as supplies on other missions that are going slightly further afield, because it’s going to be more practical to have water supplied from space rather than supplying water from earth - because it’s so heavy.

With an interest in biology, Anna said that it was interesting how the students had to consider the human aspects of the mission.

This included ’what the crew were going to eat, how being in space would actually affect them physically, and how we would have to compensate for any effects with the diet and exercise’, she said.

’We thought about growing food on the asteroid - because it would be more practical to grow it in heavier gravity [than zero].

’And we looked into what they did on the ISS, and it was interesting how they really thought about the processes of plants - so they specifically used magenta LED lights to make sure photosynthesis was at is optimum’.

’So knowledge of biology was quite useful in the [mission] process’.

She added that one of the most interesting talks from NASA was about the different foods that were given to astronauts, and how the nutrients have to be tailored to the outer space conditions.

David Cowin, from St Ninian’s High School in Douglas, was on the same mining mission as Anna, and applied his knowledge from A-level economics towards what would be done with the resources they extracted - selling it to manufacturing firms or bringing it back to earth ’without causing an economic crash’.

Being interested in physics as well, he applied this in figuring out ’how to mine things, how to create heat without damaging certain equipment, how to power the whole operation - it’s that many little details that when you look at it first you brush over, but when you dig into it, it’s that complex.’

As for standout moments, David said: ’Being able to talk to people who are experts in their fields about their experiences and hearing their insights into the industries they specialise in really was a once in a lifetime experience - I mean, when else would you be able to get talks from nuclear scientists, [jet] propulsion engineers, space law experts and even fully fledged astronauts all in the space of two weeks!’

’And not just hearing them teach us about it, it was hearing their insight into the industry and what they would do if they were us.’

Winona, from Ramsey Grammar School, was on a separate team which was working on another mining mission, to a different asteroid called Psyche.

’Going through the whole project, you really have to think about every single detail.

’Like after we had one of the talks about radioactivity, and about how that can affect the human body - you don’t even consider that just being up there [in space] is also a challenge, on top of getting there to begin with’.

Among her favourite speakers were propulsion engineer Justin Kruger, and those who talked about the food and dietary requirements of crew.

Speaking about the experience as a whole, Winona said: ’I was most surprised how well my team worked together as we had never met each other and had to overcome language barriers.

’However, I am keeping in contact with them to this day and the game nights we had were some of my favourite moments from the Space School.

’I got voted "most valuable player" in my group but in my eyes my entire team were all MVPs.

’The experience has made me consider careers involving space and in the future I hope to work in the aerospace sector and consider going into a major space agency. I would recommend this experience to anyone.’

Dr Allinson talked about how it was the second time the programme had been held virtually.

’But what the students have been saying is that they learned a huge amount about how to relate to other people virtually - how to use platforms like Zoom, how to set up some chat groups.

’They’ve learned some really good transferable skills in terms of communication with people right the way across the world, in different time zones speaking different languages.

’Above and beyond learning about space, it is about learning about other cultures and other countries.

He continued: ’And also sharing experiences of the pandemic, because obviously they were doing it last September when the island was relatively open - we didn’t have a lot of restrictions, but they were relating to people their age who literally couldn’t leave their house.’

The students will be able to reapply next year for the opportunity to go to Houston if the situation changes.