A team of five Year 6 students and two teachers from Mount Beauty Primary School finished runner-up in the Andy Thomas Space Foundation's Kids in Space national finals held at the Australian Space Discovery Centre in Adelaide last week.

The team of Jeremy, Andie, Lachie, Poppie and Eloise had qualified for the national final by winning the Victorian competition in Wangaratta earlier this year.

The challenge for the 'Kids In Space' competition was to design something which uses space technology to solve a real-world problem.

Last week the team presented their clever pollution-cleaning ocean floor Rover design.

The Rover is guided by satellites to areas showing up as being particularly polluted, such as the great Pacific garbage patch that ocean currents all drag in rubbish and it accumulates.

A second team in the Year 6 classroom then designed the next step process from the rubbish being delivered to the boat, where the rubbish collected was turned into fuel to be used.

Placing second in all of Australia was an amazing achievement by the team - and the wider Year 6 co-hort who supported the project - and a great reward for the effort of teacher, Hayley Dodd.

Some 700 schools throughout Australia had applied to be part of the 'Kids in Space' program, with participation from more than 16,000 students.

Only 85 schools were chosen to participate and one school from each state went through to the national competition.

Students from all over Australia produced innovative projects that used 3D printing and looked at issues such as space debris, food supply for astronauts and preserving First Nations knowledge of the night sky.

The 'Kids in Space' competition is delivered by Makers Empire across Australia and offers industry links and real-world learning opportunities.