Schoolgirls from all over Bradford have been marooned on different planets and lost in space for two days.

During that time they have had to catch moon rats, construct tents to protection them from the heat of nearby stars and work out how to get electricity from lemons after their solar batteries went dead.

"Houston, we have a problem" - the famous words of Apollo 13 astronaut Jim Lovell on the ill-fated moon flight - have been taken as the theme for a special two-day package of challenges aimed at attracting more women into engineering courses at Bradford University.

Using a theme from the film, 200 13 and 14-year-olds were given materials to make different working models and left to sort out how to do the job.

And the GETSET project - Girls Entering Tomorrow's Science Engineering and Technology - was a big hit with them.

The package, put together by the Imperial College in London, has never been tried out before, according to David Ross, from Bradford Council education department's inspection, support and advisory service.

"There is a huge void in the number of women in the engineering industry as a whole," he said.

"The aim of this project is to get more schoolgirls interested in the subject with a view to going on to take the subject in higher education.

"The biggest influences on a children's option choices at school are their parents and their teachers and historically girls are not being promoted into science and technology."

Jack Bradley - of the university's mechanical engineering department - said: "The whole face of engineering has changed - it isn't just heavy machinery any more, there is hi-tech engineering as well.

"But only about ten per cent of the students on engineering courses are female.

"This is a pioneering scheme and if it is successful - which I think it is - it will go around the country. There are already several universities wanting to use it."

The pupils themselves were pretty impressed with their own efforts.

Amereen Rehman (crct), 15, and Aliah Hussain,14, of Halifax High School, were given the job of building an electronic timing mechanism with a microchip.

Amereen said: "Boys have always done this kind of thing and girl's haven't - but once you get the hang of it it's all right".

Meanwhile, in the mechanical engineering department, 14-year-olds Hayley Burns-Dobson and Caroline Wilkinson and Catherine Vickers, 13, were trying out a hoist seat they had built. The trio, from Holy Family School in Keighley, were delighted that it worked.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.