Students’ space odyssey as astronaut makes contact

“Oscar Romeo Four, India, Sierra Sierra, This is Echo India One, India Sierra Sierra. Over.”

More than 700 pupils sat silently in the darkened school hall, walls lined with an overspill of observers and some students holding aloft signs that read “Quiet”.

They all stared intently at the lit stage as Séamus McCague, national co-ordinator for the amateur radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) programme, repeated the salutation a number of times to the station floating some 400km overhead.