Students launched a weather balloon into space as part of an extra-curricular drive to encourage more girls to get involved in science and engineering.

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Rosebery Space Cadets with their weather balloon at Cambridge University​

A total of 14 Year 10 students from Rosebery School for Girls in White Horse Drive, Epsom, travelled to Cambridge University on Friday, October 2 for blast-off.

The launch was the culmination of several months of hard work, research and testing by the students, who were aided by history teacher Nick Chamberlain throughout the project and on the day by head of business studies Richard Harvey.

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Rosebery Space Cadets launching their weather balloon at Cambridge University

The group - known as the Rosebery Space Cadets - were given permission to launch from Cambridge by the Civil Aviation Authority.

Their balloon was fitted with a GPS tracker that allowed them to locate the balloon in a field in Northampton and a GoPro camera that captured "stunning" views of the earth from an altitude of 20,000 metres.

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Go Pro camera footage taken from Rosebery Space Cadets’ weather balloon

History teacher Mr Chamberlain said: "I was immensely impressed with how the girls approached this task.

"Their hard work, and resilience in the face of numerous set-backs directly led to this project being such a success. They should all feel immensely proud of themselves."

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Rosebery Space Cadets with their deflated weather balloon​

Students Natalia Chemaitelli and Leana Greenstein wrote up their experience in a journal.

It read: "It was in perfect condition and all we could do was hope that our weeks of effort had amounted to something great. Thankfully, we were not disappointed.

"We couldn’t have been more relieved to see our research pay off."