EX-KINGSBRIDGE Community College student Steven Frazier-Roberts has won a free trip to the Kennedy Space Centre, Florida, to see the launch of an Orion rocket bound for the international space station – courtesy of NASA.

Steven was part of a team which designed a new-era spacesuit for astronauts – and won his chance to watch the launch from the American National Space Agency sponsors.

The team took part in the 48-hour International NASA Space Apps global challenge 'for a bit of fun'.

They ended up winning first the local, then the national and, finally, the international heats with their 'Space Wearables: Fashion Designer to Astronauts challenge' entry beating more than 8,000 of the best and brightest participants from around the world.

The aim of the project was to 'design clothing that is uniquely useful in its functionality for astronauts working on the space station – has applications on Earth – and looks super cool.' The team, consisting of technologists, artists, fashion designers and software developers, describe their suit on the Space Apps Challenge website: 'The suit and accessories include integration with social networking platforms to allow the astronauts to be better connected to ground crew, family, friends and followers on Earth and create greater understanding of the work that takes place on the ISS.

'Internet connected functionality includes: a vision board on the suit sleeve that displays live weather status for the wearer's home location, a "wearable hug" – using inflatable material that squeezes the wearers shoulders when the family member on Earth wants to let the astronaut know they're thinking of them – and a 3D printer in the pocket that delivers tools/parts/gifts direct to the suit.

'We also designed and successfully tested a mission patch for people on Earth to wear and connect to a mission to the ISS in 2015.

The patch uses an Electric Imp to wirelessly connect to the Internet and activates embedded LEDs when the ISS passes over the wearer's location.

'Both the patch and the vision board can be programmed to receive and respond to other prompts e.g. a specific twitter feed, sports team results or

For more on this story, see this week's Kingsbridge & Salcombe Gazette