Perhaps you’ve not seen, but we’ve been on a space adventure during lockdown

Before we launch into telling you all about our recent space adventure, we wanted to let you know the Unlimited team are all safe, healthy and keeping busy. After years of tireless work in building our reserves, we’re thankfully in a position to weather the virus-infused storm without furloughing any staff. Luckily, we were not touring at the time of the initial lockdown restrictions, however the same unfortunately cannot be said for some of our fellow organisations and freelance family, so we quickly committed to providing support to those around us.

Aside from access to resources and support with applications, our freelance family needed work. So to provide this, and to bring creativity, curiosity and a much-needed focus to families in lockdown, we launched The Astro Science Challenge: LIVE!

You may remember a few years ago we launched the space adventure app for 7-11 year olds, The Astro Science Challenge. This has remained a steady source of free space science activity and learning for many schools and homeschoolers. For a while now, we’ve been planning to re-launch that rocket and widen our reach even further. When lockdown restrictions suddenly stopped us all in our tracks and school doors closed, we knew there would be many families across the world feeling daunted by the challenge of juggling home schooling with working from home.

So in April, we launched The Astro Science Challenge: LIVE!  An 8 week astronaut training programme where we release Mission Briefings, share top tips with Team Leaders via email and social media, and stream live broadcasts each week from The (virtual) Space Shed with some VERY special guests, including ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, NASA astronaut Suni Williams and Johnson Space Center’s ISS Flight Controller Kayla LaFrance.

We were taken by surprise when over 3,500 Cadets (and counting) from across the world signed up to our space adventure. Here’s a quick look at what some of them have been up to over the last 8 weeks.

As well as this…

We opened the new UNSA shop
Due to popular demand, we decided to open a shop with our friends at Teemill so our Cadets (and Team Leaders) can get hold of their very own UNSA uniform. The t-shirts are made from organic, recycled, plastic-free materials in a factory powered entirely by renewable energy, and all proceeds go to future UNSA projects! We’ve had such an amazing response to the launch, that we’re looking at widening the collection (shhh, no one knows this yet)…
Visit the shop

and launched the new UNSA website!
We decided the UNSA website deserved a makeover. This is actually just the beginning of a long-term digital development process that we’re diving into with consultant Mahesh Ramachandra, and our trusty web designers, Maraid Design, to align the many UNSA resources and build a community with our audiences. The Astro Science Challenge website got a makeover in the process too!
Visit the new UNSA website

Oh, and speaking of websites…

We’ve switched to a green web host
Back in April, we decided to switch to Green Hosting, a UK based green web host powered entirely by renewable energy. In the process we changed all of our domains and email addresses to .earth too. To encourage others to do the same, our General Manager wrote a blog post about the process.
Read the blog post

and we have a new PayPal Giving Fund page
We feel strongly about making UNSA activities, podcasts, resources and videos free for everyone to access. As our loyal community grows, so do the resources and support needed to deliver our projects. As a charity, we’ve decided to start accepting donations to help launch more projects, for more families.
Make a one-off donation now
Or set up a monthly donation here

What next?

It’s been a busy few months so we’re taking some time to rest, reflect and be with our loved ones (who by this point have started to forget what we look like). Our focus over the coming months is to listen to the voices that need to be heard, and plan for the future. You’ll hear from us again soon.

Stay safe friends,
Team Unlimited x