'Out-of-this-world' presentation

Treloar School students were transported into another dimension this week when an astronaut paid them a visit.

Paolo Nespoli, an Italian astronaut who works at the European Space Agency, dropped in to speak to students during their final week at Froyle.

He shared his experiences of space and gave a presentation entitled ‘A View from Space’.

Paolo, who has taken more than 25,000 images of earth during his missions, shared a few with the students and invited them to guess which parts of the world were pictured.

He said: “I’ve been involved in the space industry for a long time. I have worked with the European Space industry for more than 20 years, and before that I worked in research and development laboratories in Italy where I built equipment and pieces of satellite.

“It was my childhood dream and as soon as I could do something to realise that dream, I did.”

Paolo spent 16 days in space during his first mission in 2007, and six months during his second, in 2010. He shared fascinating facts with the students including that it only takes eight and a half minutes to get into space from the launch pad they departed from, and how six months in space ages the human skeleton by an incredible 10 years.

He added: “The presentation is all about the adventure of going into space and making your dreams come true from my own personal experiences, including the reality of being weightless in space and in a completely different environment. You have to relearn skills and do things in a different way to how you would do on earth, because of zero gravity and the changes to the human body.”

Treloar Trust Chief Executive, Tony Reid, joined the students for the special assembly.

He said: "What an amazing experience it was to have Paolo join us. To have the opportunity to meet an astronaut was a truly once-in-a-lifetime experience and Paolo delivered a brilliant presentation that the students thoroughly enjoyed, and he showed how if you work hard you can achieve your dreams. We'd like to thank Paolo for giving up his time to visit us at Treloar's and say that we all had a brilliant time."