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31 July 2023

Students from Our Lady of Good Counsel School, Deepdene, will represent the state in October after winning the Victorian final of The Andy Thomas Space Foundation ‘Kids in Space’ program.

Students from Our Lady of Good Counsel School, Deepdene, have won the Victorian final of The Andy Thomas Space Foundation ‘Kids in Space’ program and will travel to Adelaide for the national final in October.

In a wonderful achievement for Catholic education, a project by St Joseph’s School, Hawthorn, took out the peer prize, voted most popular among the students from 40 competing teams.

The Kids in Space program challenged students to use technologies to identify and solve problems in space, or on earth, moderated against United Nations sustainability goals.

Teams explored issues ranging from improving health and wellbeing in space to increasing safety with clever technological innovations, managing space debris and living in extreme environments.

Judges were particularly impressed with teams developing innovative solutions by comparing problems of space to planetary living and transferring solutions to the differing environments, such as applying an understanding of earth extremophiles to build better spacesuits, or using space technologies to rescue and protect endangered species on earth.

Our Lady of Good Counsel School’s students explored growing healthy food in space, in low or zero gravity environments, recognising all the constraints for growth and survival.

The students excelled, demonstrating clear design processes, along with empathy for others and the environment. The team also displayed a distinct prototyping cycle, from exploring first ideas to building, testing and improving final products.

The students demonstrated the capacity to share and articulate learnings through a presentation and Q&A session with judges, showing clear understanding of the science and mathematics concepts applied to engineer final solutions.

Congratulations to all teams that participated and best wishes to the students from Our Lady of Good Counsel School as they carry the hopes of Victoria to the national stage.