The Astro Science Challenge (2015-2020)

Originally created in 2015 in collaboration with Coney, the Royal Observatory, the Met Office, the Science Museum (London), the British Science Association, Young Rewired State and the European Space Agency for the UK Space Agency’s education programme celebrating Tim Peake’s Principia mission to the International Space Station.

The Astro Science Challenge was an interactive, space science adventure for children aged 7-11 to inspire them in STEM subjects. More than 12,000 participating Cadets across the UK completed a series of Missions operated in real time in the run up to Tim Peake’s launch before graduating as fully fledged Agents of UNSA in a live event at the Science Museum’s iMax cinema with remote graduation ceremonies taking place across the UK and the world!

photos: Richard Davenport

When the world went into Lockdown during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, we ran a new live version with more than 5000 Cadets with twice weekly live broadcasts on the UNSA YouTube channel and the project remained free for anyone to take part in via the app we created until 2026.

“My class find Jon and his Space Shed videos hilarious!”
Sarah – Primary School Teacher

“We are loving it. Homeschooling my gifted 6 year old and it’s pretty hard to find things that really stimulate and excite her…this really has…so thankyou, thankyou…. She is delighted by the exciting content but also by the humour of the Space Shed and Jon Spooner….and the human and story connection that makes learning feel fun to her again….She is planning to make a video presentation about sun spots and is full of lots of very crazy ideas….going to be fun.”
Home Educator

“Loved having videos to launch the learning challenge – all the children singing along and so excited about learning… I have 120 inspired children!”
Teacher

“It has made them feel that they have the ability to pursue a science career as an adult. Thank you for returning some of that awe and wonder that science gives children. My son and myself were certainly inspired by the whole experience.”
Home Educator

“We loved it! I really liked the variety of the tasks, the flexibility and open-endedness that allowed for lots of different ideas and ways of completing them. The people running it made a great effort to engage with all the children and their comments and posts were very motivating”
Teacher

“Certain areas where my children struggle have shown an improvement that I put down to the Astro Challenge. In particular, prior to the challenge starting my son was saying he was ‘no good’ at writing and needed a lot of encouragement and help. Afterwards, he wrote his first spontaneous, no adult help, sentence. They both became more interested in space.”
Home Educator

“Previously M has struggled to present his science knowledge, despite enjoying experimenting and learning through discussion and research. On the challenge he wanted to do all the work, and spent far longer than expected on each piece of work as he wanted to really understand everything. In wanting to complete the challenge he was more open to other topics that would have otherwise been passed over.”
Home Educator