Young people from across the borough have been sending messages to astronauts in space, as part of a digital coding project. The youngsters have been taking part in the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mission Zero programme, requiring them to programme a special piece of digital code which will be sent to astronauts in space.
The children, aged between 7 to 17 years old, attend the monthly Richmond CoderDojo, run by Richmond Libraries. CoderDojo is a global volunteer led community of free programming workshops for young people and is part of the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
Every month around 25 children work with volunteering tech and coding gurus where they learn about Scratch, HTML, CSS, Python, Microbits, as well as working on the ESA Astro Pi project.
The young coders created their code, programming messages such as Hello and Good Luck, then sent them to the International Space Station. To prove the messages were received, each student was sent a certificate showing the exact date and time their programme was decoded, and where the astronauts were.
CoderDojo runs on the fourth Saturday of the month at the Old Town Hall in Richmond from 1 to 3pm. Children are encouraged to bring their own device if they can. Tickets get booked up very early and spaces are limited. To book a place, send an email at libraryvolunteer@richmond.gov.uk.
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