This is a report from the Mercury Newspaper report on the Day.
THE second rocket day at Simon Balle School blasted off to ignite young imaginations in the name
of science.
'Forward to the Future' was a roaring success for the 1,000-pupil school in Mangrove Road. Hertford.
featuring rocket launches, displays and the South-East's largest mobile planetarium.
The event was arranged in association with the Institute of Physics and the school received grants to fund the day from the Science and Technology Regional Organisation (SATRO) and the Gatsby Foundation.
Head of science Ben Miller was impressed at the turn-out last Saturday, saying: "We had over 300 people turn up over the day, which is 100 more than last year."
Although the main event was the launch of rockets by the Hornchurch Airfield Rocket Team, which reached altitudes of 2,000ft (610m) before parachuting back to earth, there were also various workshops and challenges.
One SATRO workshop asked children to design a nose cone for a Eurostar train, and children could even test their designs in a wind tunnel to find how they performed.
A model display showed the history of rocketry starting with the V-l rockets of the Second World War and progressing through a still-intact Mir up to the new European space station.
Another challenge was for children to send pressure-powered water rockets sailing towards a mock Martian surface.
"We had a Mars landscape built 30 or 40 metres from the launch site as a target, but sadly none of the rockets made it, although a few overshot," said Mr Miller.