On Monday 28th November we were lucky enough to go to the National Railway Museum at Shildon.
This was very special because there was a spacecraft that had been all the way to space. Earlier that day we had a tweet from Tim Peake himself (the astronaut who flew this spacecraft to the International Space Station). This spacecraft was called Soyuz TMA-19M. We saw the space module up close and personal. It was really small to fit people in. It even looked rusty, but we found out that it was burnt as it travelled through space at speed. We learnt about the 3 different modules that made up the craft. The propulsion module which was at the bottom, this helped shoot up the space craft. The descender module helped bring back the space craft to Earth. Finally, there was the orbital module at the top. The space rocket was so big, 10 times the height of the museum, so the astronauts needed to get a lift up to the module and then crawl into the small descender module. We got down on our hands and knees to look closely at the boosters underneath the module. There was even the suit and helmet of an astronaut which we were able to dress up in. It was really cool pretending to be an astronaut.
Furthermore, we were able to explore the different types of trains in the locomotion museum. There were lots of different colours, sizes and they were made for different purposes. Some were made to carry people, coal, oil whilst others were made to plough snow to keep the railway lines clear of snow. We were able to test out the different light signals, the different styles of chairs in the trains and we even got to watch small modelled trains move around. We were lucky enough to see a speeding train drive straight past us. We even showed how creative we can be by colouring in and building our very own locomotion. Before we knew it, the day was over. We had a really fun day learning all about space rockets and trains.
Someone commented, “The rocket that went to space was 10 time taller than the building.” Another said, “Tim Peake was the astronaut who went to the International Space Station.” A child said, “I really liked learning about space.”
