NASA Challenge to Rockeeters: Aim High

December 7, 2009 — Aim high. One mile high. NASA has invited more than 350 students from middle schools, high schools and colleges — 37 teams nationwide — to take part in the 2009-2010 NASA Student Launch Projects. Their challenge is to build powerful rockets of their own design, complete with a working science payload, and launch them to an altitude of 1 mile. The challenge is designed to inspire students to parlay their interests in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics into rewarding careers in fields critical to NASA's mission of exploration and scientific discovery. Beginning in the fall, each team will spend eight months designing, building and field-testing their rocket. The students also must create a unique, on-board science experiment that can survive the mile-high flight and yield test results after the vehicle parachutes back to Earth. In addition, teams will create a project Web site, write multiple preliminary and post-launch reports, and develop educational engagement projects for schools and youth organizations in their communities. The goal is to inspire even younger generations of future explorers. The Student Launch Projects will conclude April 15-18, 2010, when the teams gather at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. There, NASA engineers will put the students' rockets through a professional design review similar to that undertaken for every NASA launch. The students then will embark on a two-day "launchfest." "The participants in NASA's Student Launch Projects continue to demonstrate the sky is no limit for enterprising young minds committed to creativity, innovation and teamwork," said Tammy Rowan, manager of the Academic Affairs Office at Marshall, which organizes the event. "… many of these industrious young people are headed toward rewarding careers in which they'll lead new journeys of exploration and discovery — not just to Earth's lower troposphere, but to other worlds." Teams can qualify to participate in the Student Launch Initiative by placing in the top level two teams at the Rockets for Schools competition held in Wisconsin or by placing in the top at the Team America Rocketry Challenge, held in Virginia. For a list of the schools competing in 2009-10, click here.

A rocket blasts off during the 2007 Rockets for Schools competition, held in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Photo credit: Rockets for Schools

• 2010 - 07/19 - VSS Enterprise Completes First Crewed Flight
• 2010 - 07/16 - Students' Experiments to be Conducted on Space Station
• 2010 - 07/16 - Combs: 10 States Left to Go!
• 2010 - 07/09 - Solar Plane Flies Day and Night on Sun Power
• 2010 - 07/08 - Red Bull Cancels Portugal Air Race