The 2,000 middle-school and high-school pupils at Bois-Colombes school in Paris can look forward to a rich and rewarding year. With their teachers, they will be working throughout the school year on a range of projects sharing a common theme: the study of comets and Europe’s Rosetta mission. These projects have been conceived especially with national science week in mind and will be presented at an open day next April.

Pupils will not be straying too far from the curriculum, though, since the projects are based on a multidisciplinary approach adapted to high-school teaching programmes. They will study comets from every angle, while covering a broad range of science and other subjects, including French, history, languages and visual arts.

From 11 to 20 October, Bois-Colombes school will be a hive of activity, with exhibitions, models and gatherings giving pupils plenty of opportunities to learn more about the science objectives of the Rosetta mission and its partners. Besides the science and technologies involved, time will also be spent on careers in space and associated areas of activity.

For CNES, this operation meets a dual objective: to inform future citizens about how space technologies are helping us to understand and protect our planet; and to make an active contribution to young people's science and engineering culture by exploiting their fascination for space as a teaching tool.