Croydon High Shines at Galactic Challenge

On Saturday 27 January 2024, 14 pupils from Croydon High School (Juniors and Seniors) accompanied by Mrs Karteepan, Mrs Krishnamurthy, Mrs Nathanael and Mrs Abrahams took part in the Galactic Challenge in Bede’s School in East Sussex.

Galactic Challenge gives young people the chance to experience space, science and engineering first hand through industry simulation. This competition is the junior version of the UK Space Design Competition and the objective was to design a space settlement in low earth orbit.

Croydon High pupils were split across 3 companies out of the 5 companies that were formed. The pupils gained the experience of working in a large team in a highly pressurised environment. It is no surprise that our girls took the lead in presenting part of the final presentation to the judges in their respective companies.

Some of our junior pupils from Year 6 got elected to present their ideas on stage to the judges. This was indeed a proud moment for us!

One of the many highlights was, Ahaana (Y9), who was elected as Vice President of Engineering in her company named Infinity. During the presentation, Ahaana and Riya explained the structural design of their space settlement design mimicking a beehive. The judges were particularly impressed with the e-ink windows and security ideas. Ahaana did a brilliant job in answering the questions from the judges and backed her ideas with scientific explanations. Ahaana led her company to victory winning the judges approval along with her fellow Croydon High peers, Riya, Mahathi, Mahi, and Sophie.

This is what our girls had to say about their experience:

“I really enjoyed my experience at the Galactic Challenge, I learnt the largest size that a satellite can be before falling out of orbit is the size of a rugby pitch! I really enjoyed our practice sessions in Croydon High where we got to know each other, and the challenges that we might face. I came out of this with a head full of thoughts and lots of new friends.”
Sophie

“The galactic challenge was an incredible experience which I’ll never forget. It was a bit intense towards the end but we managed to do it anyway. I learnt a lot of interesting facts about space on the day which I’d have never found out about otherwise. I also made a lot of new friends and it was great fun working with them!”
Misha

“The Galactic Challenge was a wonderful opportunity for us to understand how to use our knowledge about space to create a settlement that is able to support life outside Earth. Working with new people who we had never met before was an enjoyable way to understand how to collaborate and develop teamwork skills which will help us in the future. We worked in an amazing environment, where we, in addition to learning about astronomy, found out whether we are better at designing, or at research.”
Sara

“The Galactic Challenge was an amazing experience for me. As well as using our existing knowledge to design our space settlement, we learned lots of new things. For example, I learnt about anaerobic digestion, the process by which organic waste is broken down in an oxygen free environment to generate energy.”
Arya

“I found the galactic challenge a wonderful way to meet new people and learn new things about necessities in a settlement and a bit about astronomy. I learned how to work well with people and to communicate better when in a team. I loved meeting new people and working with them. All in all, it was a great experience to be creative and collaborate.”
Mahi

“I found the Galactic Challenge to be a really interesting experience – I hadn’t done anything like it before and I am happy that I was able to take part! Being vice president of my team was quite hard because I had to help control and plan out what people’s roles were and the things we needed to do before a certain time, but I would say that overall it was really nice to be answering and asking questions with the people in our team. My main highlight would definitely be our team winning the competition! It showed me that even though everyone was a bit chaotic, (especially some of the boys in the group), our hard work and effort paid off. I hope that we will be able to do something like this again in the future!”
Ahaana

“The day was exciting and tense, and not to mention, very stressful. The boys were even more so! I was able to learn how to manage tasks in timed pressure and I got to work with others of different ages. All of the work was ultimately worth it as we won first place but I will definitely remember this experience for next time.”
Riya

Mrs Arabi Karteepan
Head of Physics

Mrs Maya Krishnamurthy
Head of Enterprise Technology – Junior School