A STUDENT has won a prize of £4,000 after entering a competition run by the UK Space Agency.

Nunthorpe Academy student Daniel Currie won the prize in the Agency’s SatelLife competition which sought ways that satellites can improve life on Earth.

The 16-year-old's winning idea was to develop an app which uses satellite technology to track friends and family members competing in running races.

While this is already available in large scale events, such as big city marathons, it is not available for smaller races or those off road.

Along with the prize money, Daniel will now go on to pitch his idea to a panel of industry experts at the Harwell Space Cluster in Oxfordshire in June in the hope of gaining further support to turn it into reality.

Daniel said: “I knew from the beginning of the competition I wanted to incorporate my life-long passion of middle-distance running.

"One problem faced by many spectators at running events is that they cannot see how well people are doing during the race as the people running go off into the distance - this is where my app comes in.

“I truly wasn’t expecting to win. The main reason I entered was because I knew it would be a great thing to talk about when applying to university, whether I won or not.

"Then when I found out I had won the money and an opportunity to meet prominent figures in the space industry I was absolutely over the moon.

“My biggest dream would be to become an astronaut, incorporating my physical capabilities with the knowledge of my A level subjects, Maths, Further Maths, Physics and Chemistry but any career in the space industry would be fantastic.”

The judging panel was made up of experts from the UK Space Agency, the European Space Agency, the Satellite Applications Catapult in Harwell and industry.

Emily Gravestock, Head of Applications at the UK Space Agency, said: “The quality of entries this year was very high. We were particularly pleased to see such a wide variety of satellite applications being used. These young people clearly recognised the diversity of areas that satellites impact on our day-to-day lives.

“We were impressed by Daniel’s inspiration and knowledge, drawing on his own experience as a runner, and I look forward to seeing how he develops his idea in the future.”