The lucky winners of the Edge into Space competition have arrived home from an exhilarating and exhausting two weeks in America where they explored the Kennedy Space Station and saw the Space Shuttle Discovery land.

Thirty five very excited young people stepped off a plane in Florida in July to embark on a once in a lifetime experience. It was because of their innovative and original ideas that they were picked out of thousands of entrants. The quality of the winners and entrants is testament to the effectiveness of practical learning, the core belief of Edge. Learning-by doing has proven to be an exciting way to encourage students to take an interest in space and science.

It was unanimous that the highlight of the trip was the astronaut training, where the students were able to feel weightlessness, pilot a simulated shuttle landing and hang out with real astronauts. While there was very little free time, they did manage to record video blogs, write a few postcards and update their journals. The BBC cameraman accompanying them also snapped some great pictures, all of which are on www.edgeintospace.co.uk. In between the Space Stations Kennedy and Johnson, shuttles landing, shopping, eating and building the occasional rocket, our lucky students popped into Sea World too!

Edge and ISSET are proud of our young achievers who had such a wonderful time and found new friends along the way.