Team hoping to send experiment to the moon meet Sonning students

Scientific students showed off their space competition entry to Sonning Primary schoolchildren on Friday.

Sam Brass, of Jarvis Road in Twyford, a third year aerospace engineering student at the University of Bath, has entered a competition run by Indian space technology company Team Indus which, if they won, could see their experiment taken to the moon to be tested out.

Team Indus is, in turn, competing in the Google Lunar XPrize as it seeks to be the first private company to send a spacecraft to the moon.

Along with fellow Bath students Nick Doughty, 21, and Elliot Robinson, 18, who is also of Twyford, the 20-year-old has designed a device called the LunaDome.

It is smaller than a soft drink can, but can inflate a dome to a pressure that is comfortable for humans to breath.

Data acquired from the experiment would provide information on how they could scale up the dome to allow humans to inhabit it, and potentially colonise the moon.

Sam and the team gave a talk to pupils at Sonning Primary, in Liguge Way, which he attended as a boy.

He said: "It was very surreal really, seeing all the kids in the position I was in.

"It was quite a weird experience. I definitely enjoyed it."

"They seemed really interested."

The LunaDome team are set to fly out to Bangalore in March for the final of the competiton, in which a panel of experts will decide which experiment could be flying to the moon.