We're over the moon with our tweet from astronaut Tim Peake
A tweet from space - from none other than British astronaut Tim Peake - has sent three youngsters into orbit.
The Howell siblings, from Bilbrook near Wolverhampton, were thrilled to receive a communication from the International Space Station 250 vertical miles away.
Sisters Kacey, aged 11, and nine-year-old Kristi, along with brother Lance, aged six, sent the astronaut a picture of the Raspberry Pi computer they built as part of an initiative to get children programming.
He responded by tweeting: 'Great work! Cannot wait to see what you code for @astro_pi', referring to a follow-up competition.
The youngsters discovered their special message on Friday morning before the girls headed off to Bilbrook CE Middle School and Lance to Lane Green First School.
Proud dad David Howell said: "We'd tweeted Tim the night before and the next morning I turned on the computer at around 7.45am, saw the message and said 'Hey guys, I think you need to look at this.' They were literally over the moon and went to school with spring in their step that morning."
The family, of Homefield Road, Bilbrook, have been following Tim Peake's time in space on Twitter and have got involved in various educational activities set up on the space project's website.
They watched the astronaut launch into space just before Christmas and have looked out for the space station in the sky, charting the sightings and tweeting a video they made of one of the occasions they glimpsed the station.
They also constructed paper rockets and, most recently, took part in the challenge to design a computer.
Their blue, green, yellow and red model - which they named 'Rainbow' won praise from the organisers for being the first multi-coloured version.
David, a technical author for Alstom in Wolverhampton, and wife Tracey encourage the children in a range of pastimes as well as science activities.
He said: "Lance wants to be an astronaut and the girls are both interested in science although they both also go to a stage academy and love that too.
"This has really caused some excitement.
"They're not the first to get a tweet from Tim but locally, to get a communication from space, it's a great thing."
