Rocks from space descend on school pupils (From Oxford Mail)

Rocks from space descend on school pupils

11:00am Tuesday 4th December 2012 in News

METEORITES landed at Headington School in Oxford as pupils came face to face with segments of rock from space.

Pupils from Year Nine and above were able to see and touch moon rocks – a 4.3 billion-year-old nickel meteorite and a 1.2 billion-year-old piece of Mars.

Hannah Ford, 17, from Chipping Norton, said: “I was amazed to be able to touch something older than the solar system.”

Emily Abbott, 16, from Bicester, said: ‘It was exciting to actually see the rocks and be so close to objects from the moon, Mars and asteroids.”

Students in younger years were given the opportunity to learn more about the solar system during the week through interactive astronomy lessons.

The lunar samples were provided by the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council and were collected during the 1960s and 1970s during some of NASA’s first space missions.

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