BELLEVUE, Wash. — A group of middle school students from Bellevue’s Open Window School are busy preparing to send multiple experiments into space, all thanks to NASA’s TechRise Student Challenge.
Trudi Hoogenboom is a planetary scientist and teaches science at the school. She said the 11 students part of this project aren’t part of a formal group or class, so she’s helping coordinate and oversee the project.
Hoogenboom said the students brainstormed different experiments they’d want to conduct in space and then put together a proposal. Their project is one of 60 in the country that won, so now they get $1,500 to create the tests.
“NASA TechRise is, I think, one of the greatest science competitions that you can enter as a child,” she said. “It gives you the ability to design your own experiments. Think up, dream up anything you’d like. Build the instrument, have it flown on either a stratospheric balloon or a rocket lander. Then have it land and get the data to do real science on.”
These students will conduct seven different tests. They have a small box that they’re soldering all necessary tools and instruments onto that will then launch into space. Sixth-grader Asher Cook used AI software to design a 3D model of the box before another student physically built and attached all the pieces.
The different tests include sending dormant tardigrades (microscopic creatures that can withstand most circumstances) into space and then comparing them with control tardigrades on Earth to see if there is a better survival rate here, plus launching a pocket Geiger to test radiation levels on Earth versus space.
Sixth-grader Zoe Fulay said she can’t believe they’re getting an opportunity like this.
“Obviously very proud and excited and at the same time nervous because we’ve put in so much work and we don’t want something to go wrong and it all to not work,” she said.
The students will finalize and present their final project to NASA in mid-May, and then the instruments are expected to launch into space this summer. Once that is complete, they’ll be able to run their tests and analyze the data.