Norway beckoning for young scientist

With the stars firmly in her eyes, a teen science enthusiast is about to take off on her second international space camp.

Palmerston North’s Freyberg High School year 13 pupil Tessa Hiscox, 17, is one of two young Kiwis chosen by Royal Society Te Aparangi to attend the European Space Camp at the Andoya Space Centre in remote northern Norway.

She will join Megan Poehler from Stratford’s St Mary’s Diocesan School at the seven-day camp in early August.

The trip will give Hiscox a chance to catch up with a Norwegian friend she made while attending an American Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama, last July.

‘‘That was a week-long camp, plus we spent three days in Houston.

‘‘It was more like a summer camp, but we got to experience weightlessness in a 4G centrifuge, and go on something that’s like the giant drop at Dreamworld, which was also 4Gs.’’

She got to visit the old Apollo moon mission control centre and met two space shuttle astronauts.

‘‘The cool thing was meeting all the other people there from around the world. What I enjoyed most about the camp was seeing how different cultures came together in the pursuit of something greater for us all.

‘‘Astronauts see no borders from space – it’s just land.’’

Hiscox earned her place on the Norway camp as the result of a study she carried out on variable or cepheid stars.

‘‘Variable stars change in shape, size and luminosity on a regular basis. They are used as rulers for measuring distances in the universe.’’

Observations needed to be carried out over time and relied largely on amateur astronomers around the world submitting information to an international database.