Video: Star pupil is hired for space project

However, at the tender age of 16, Luke Bussell has been recruited as a software engineer for a space project and is now set to work on helping to design spacecraft which could be orbiting the earth by this time next year.

The student, currently studying for his GCSEs, impressed astronomy bosses with an essay he had written to such an extent that he was invited to participate in a satellite project doing work which his teachers say would be more usually done by an undergraduate student.

Russell Newlands, Luke’s astronomy teacher at Bootham School, York, said: “It’s a fantastic opportunity for him. For someone to have asked him to do that at sixteen is quite amazing. As far as I am aware Luke is in quite a rare position.”

Mike Shaw, housemaster, biology teacher and astronomy enthusiast at the independent School added: “It’s not bad is it, for someone who hasn’t even started his A levels yet!”

Luke, who is a Year 11 student at Bootham School and a member of the school’s astronomy group, got more than he bargained for when he started doing his research for the annual Society for the History of Astronomy essay prize.

Choosing to write about the history of unmanned exploration of Mars, he contacted the British Interplanetary Society to quiz their experts in this fascinating field.

They were so impressed with the depth of Luke’s IT skills that they have recruited him as a software engineer to work on the KickSat project, which will the see the design, building and testing of very small spacecraft called Sprites.

Yesterday Luke, who lives near York, said: “I did not realise that I would be working on something that might be going into space.

“It’s very exciting.

“It’s good as I am only sixteen. I think that my family are quite proud,” he added.

The sixteen-year-old says he has a keen interest in engineering and space: “Its just the mystery of what’s out there and what’s beyond our earth,” Luke said.

He says he is interested in pursuing a career in aeronautical engineering because it gave him the chance to discover new boundaries and hopefully find something new, the ramifications of which could eventually impact upon people’s lives around the globe.

The project will see the launch into orbit of hundreds of tiny independent satellites, each capable of sending data back to earth that could potentially help with climate monitoring, communications developments or other applications as yet uninvented.

He is helping compile the software which will direct the satellite when it is in orbit.

“I can basically tell it what its going to do when it’s in space,” Luke said last night.

Sprites are basically inexpensive space craft that have been scaled down from smaller versions. The aim is to have them launched into low earth orbit for just a few hundred US dollars each.

Each Sprite is tiny - the size of a couple of postage stamps each - but those behind the project plan that they will eventually have the capabilities of large space craft.

They have a tiny computer, or microcontroller, complete with memory and sensors on board, together with solar cells and a radio transceiver.

Luke was invited to visit the British Interplanetary Society to assist with the KickSat project, he said: “I had a good day and ended up in a lead role programming the Sprite.”

He is currently in the final year of his GCSEs and he hopes to stay on a Bootham to do four A-Levels in chemistry, physics, maths and Latin and them hopefully go onto university if his exams go well.

Mr Newlands added: “We thought that his essay would be good but I think that Luke was as surprised as anybody by what has happened.

“He is certainly a very bright boy and very able and very interested in astronomy.

“He has had an interest in electronics for quite a long time and he has built his own microcontrollers,” Mr Newlands said yesterday.

Microcontrollers are used in automatically controlled products and devices, such as remote controls, office machines, appliances, power tools, toys and other systems to control even more devices and processes. Around the home they could also be used to control things such as lighting systems.