After weeks of hard work – and a few setbacks along the way – pupils who designed and built their own weather balloon finally launched it in to the stratosphere.

Pupils from the Yewstock School spent six weeks attending afterschool club The Rocketeers, where they planned, designed and built a high altitude weather balloon.

The balloon had been due to launch in June but weather conditions delayed it. It was almost postponed again due to concerns over a helium tank malfunction, but IT technician Jacques Steventon and learning mentor Georgia Vine intervened.

During weeks of meticulous planning, Jacques and Georgia helped pupils construct a styrofoam box equipped with a camera, GPS and radio transmitter, following in the footsteps of the MetService, NASA and Google who have all used these high altitude balloons for research.

The 1300L helium balloon was launched from the school playground with excited pupils watching from a safe distance in anticipation.

Pupils then used the GPS tracker to chase and locate the payload as it travelled through the earth’s stratosphere - the lowest layer of the earth’s atmosphere where almost all of the earth’s weather events take place - before it burst the stratosphere and coasted back down to earth some three-and-a-half hours later.

Pupils were able to capture photos of their school and surrounding community plus its journey across Dorset into Devon, providing pupils with hands on experience of science and technology in action.

Children found the chase and retrieval exciting; there was no certainty that the payload would not land in problem locations like hedges or trees, pylons, main roads, rivers, ditches, inaccessible fields remote from a road or a roof.

It was an exciting moment for the team when the tracks stopped in a wheat field near Sidmouth in Devon, some 70 miles away.

The payload with the shredded remains of the burst balloon had fulfilled its mission and had settled in a tractor track for easy collection.

Jacques said: “It was a wonderfully memorable moment after an exciting and highly-rewarding adventurous day for everyone involved.”

The aim of Yewstock’s Rocketeers club was to raise climate and weather awareness amongst pupils.