A White Cloud student team of all girls from White Cloud Junior High School just won for the second time a national NASA STEM competition, the TechRise Student Challenge.
TechRise, in its third year, is a STEM challenge for 6th-12th graders that offers students the invaluable opportunity to design and test their innovative solutions for space exploration and the study of Earth while getting hands-on insight into the payload design and flight test process.
This year’s challenge was to design a science or technology experiment that could be tested on either a NASA-sponsored high-altitude balloon flight or a rocket-powered lander. The White Cloud Junior High School students’ experiment, titled Rocket Fusion, will be tested on a rocket-powered lander. The students will now work through the remainder of the school year building out their experiments with the support of professional engineers, in preparation for a flight test this summer.
The educator team lead Sherry Claflin shared, “I am so proud of this team of girls!! Their dedication to pushing for a second winning proposal is such a compliment to their sense of school pride.”
The winning team will receive $1,500 to build out their experiments, a 3D-printed flight box in which to build it, and technical support from Future Engineers throughout the process. They will work through the remainder of the school year building out their experiment with the support of professional engineers in preparation for a NASA-sponsored flight test this summer.
White Cloud is one of 60 teams from across the country to win this contest and receive funding for their experiements.
