FIVE pupils from Chard School were over the moon when they got to meet astronaut Tim Peake.

The chosen children got the out-of-this-world experience at the first UK Space Agency Schools’ Conference held on November 2.

The event was held in Portsmouth and saw the school’s head of science, Richard Lucas, take the students to meet the space ace face-to-face, ask him questions and see him give a talk to more than 600 other people.

Mr Lucas said: “This was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, something the children will never forget, meeting Tim, shaking his hand and hearing him answering their questions.

“The conference wasn’t just about the children meeting Tim and presenting their school work, they also got to look around various exhibits from other schools and a number of space industries.

“They listened to Tim giving an address to more than 600 delegates about what it was like travelling to space in the Soyuz rocket, what life was like in the International Space Station and the sort of experiments and other jobs he had to do.

“They heard about his thrilling spacewalk, when he had to work his way right to the very end of the ISS, and then the chance he had just to gaze down at the magnificent view of Earth through his visor.

“The children were fascinated to find out what life was like in the ISS.

“To be one of the few schools to be invited to the first UK Space Agency Schools’ Conference was a great honour and excitement for everyone at Chard School, and was a fitting way to cap off a whole year of school-wide cross-curricular work on space.

“All the children have been inspired to study the STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) so that they can be involved in the space work of the future, for which there is an ever-growing need.”

At the conference, the five pupils had to give a 10-minute presentation on the space work that they had been doing over the year in front of a large audience.

Josua, one of the Chard School pupils, said: “It was really exciting meeting a real astronaut, someone who’d actually been in space, and shaking his hand.”

Sophie said that she felt very nervous meeting Tim because he was such a famous person but actually “he was really smiley, fun and interesting, just like in all the pictures”.