Some of our Year 7 to 11 students have been selected to participate in the IGNIS Mission, run by NASA and Australian universities including Edith Cowan University (ECU). The IGNIS Mission seeks to better understand the relationship between lightning events and bushfire ignition. Edith Cowan University (ECU) is the only university in Western Australia participating in this mission.
The mission will be carried out over three phases, spanning eight years:
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Phase 1 involves airborne flight campaigns using Cessna aeroplanes, flying from Bunbury to Esperance, to test satellite instruments. ECU Engineering staff and students will participate alongside NASA, with the aim of tracking thunderstorms and lightning activity.
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Phase 2, scheduled for 2026, will see the launch of a satellite to collect data from low Earth orbit.
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Phase 3 will involve a deep space mission to Jupiter to study its atmosphere and lightning events, and to its moon Io to investigate its heat signatures.
The intern program has been created to give students from Years 7 to 11 across Western Australia hands-on experience and involvement in Phase 2 of the mission.
This marks our second visit to ECU as part of the intern program, where we took part in a series of workshops exploring the fundamentals of vibration and conducted hands-on experiments with different materials.
We look forward to sharing updates on the progress of our mission!
Mrs Vanessa Thurgate
Head of Mathematics
