ROCKETS, liquid nitrogen, cryogenics, and space survival were just some of the mind boggling topics awaiting Dulverton year six pupils at the University of Exeter.

After presenting their classwork on how man could get to Mars, the children took part in a session on rocket science and launched their own rockets – some flying very high!

With NASA planning to send humans to Mars in the 2030s, the aim of the day was both to help the children to understand the challenges of long distance space travel and to come up with ideas of how humans could reach the planet.

Some sessions discussed how to survive the extreme cold of space, illustrated by experiments with liquid nitrogen, and the effects of weightlessness (zero gravity) and low-pressure on the human body.