Satellites deliver out-of-this-world learning

Matthew Wallace’s homemade satellite receiver isn’t just collecting signals from tens of thousands of kilometres above Earth; it’s bringing real-time space data into the classroom.

Over the past few months, the Blackfriars STEM Coordinator has used an old Foxtel dish as well as a re-purposed Wi-Fi grid dish, some 3D printed parts and a series of antennas to capture information from space – including from China’s meteorological Fengyun satellites, the Elektro-L Russian weather satellites and polar-orbiting satellites developed by the European Space Agency.

He then uses an open-source software package to process the satellite transmissions and create images.

Among those images are those that show flood waters in South Australia’s outback, cyclones over New Zealand’s North Island and surface ice off the Russian coast.

“It was just something different to do in the classroom,” Mr Wallace said of the project’s inception.

“We see weather pictures on the TV, but where do they come from? How do they collect them?

“I thought, if the kids can see on the software that the satellite’s coming up, and then they can see the signal on their screen, if they can receive a transmission, it makes it much more real that there’s a signal being sent.”

Mr Wallace said the images could be used across the Secondary Science curriculum.

“In Year 9 global systems, the students need to look at why is there climate change? And you can’t understand impacts globally unless you’re looking globally,” he said.

“With these images, you can see all the water. And if the surface was of all that water was raised one degree, how much energy did that take? When do tropical cyclones kick off?

“And then being able to look at that and say, ‘hey, look, there’s a whole lot of cyclone activity there, and we can see that.”

A big advocate for careers in STEM, Mr Wallace said students needed a range of classroom experiences to spark post-school thinking.

“With the Australian Space Agency based here in Adelaide, there are so many great career options without leaving South Australia,” he said.

“This is just showing the kids a little of what’s possible.”

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