A team from Sewanhaka High School recently won the NASA TechRise Student Challenge, making them one of 60 winners across the country in the second-year national competition.
The Floral Park team will continue throughout the remainder of the school year to build out their experiment, “Gravitational Acceleration at Increasing Altitudes,” with the support of professional engineers ahead of a flight test this summer.
The team will get $1,500 to develop the experiment.
Sewanhaka was among the 57 winning teams in the challenge’s inaugural year in 2022 for their experiment “Atmospheric Measurement of Noxious Gases Using Sensors.” This year winners feature over 500 students across 38 states and territories.
The challenge, which is administered by Future Engineers, is designed to inspire students to seek a deeper understanding of Earth’s atmosphere, space exploration, coding and electronics as well as an appreciation of the importance of test data, according to NASA.
The approximately 275 volunteers involved in judging proposals made evaluations based on the originality of the experiment idea, impact on education and society, feasibility to conduct the experiment and the quality of the build plan.
Sewanhaka’s experiment will be tested with others via a high-altitude balloon flight at about 70,000 feet for at least four hours.
“NASA’s missions of tomorrow are sparked by the accomplishments of the Artemis Generation today in classrooms across America,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson in a statement. “Through opportunities like the TechRise Student Challenge, young people are deepening their passion in science and technology, preparing to be the future innovators and pioneers who help humanity soar to new heights and unlock more secrets of the universe.”
Winning proposals include addressing a wide variety of challenges such as the effects the climate change and protecting humans and electronics, among other things.
