“I wasn’t really into this stuff [STEM] before, but doing this with TechRise has opened my mind into wanting to look into it more,” said Sofia Zarate. Posing with the class’s rocket-powered lander components are: Raegan Roetker, Angelic Romero, Sandra Lopez and Sofia Zarate.

(HERALD PHOTO/Amanda Manchester).

EVANSTON — For the second consecutive year, Evanston Middle School (EMS) science teacher Ashley Graham’s eighth graders have won a NASA TechRise Future Engineers challenge. Last year’s eighth graders won the challenge with a high-altitude balloon design, though this year’s class unanimously voted to draft a proposal for a 3D mapper and thermal rocket-powered lander. “They are only one of sixty winners on both missions and the only winners from Wyoming,” Graham proudly explained.

The team submitted their specifications proposal last October. In January, they found out they had won the $1,500 to begin purchasing components to bring their vision to life. Since then, the students have had weekly meetings with NASA and TechRise to learn new skills such as soldering, programming, wiring and wiring diagrams. 

“They are creating a 3D map of a simulated lunar surface.  To create this, they will mount a LIDAR [light detection and ranging] camera and an IR [Infared] camera to the bottom of their flight box along with a GPS to track where locations are, along with the other components to run and save the data,” explained Graham.

“My experience has been interesting. We’ve been really excited about the programming aspect of it — it’s really cool to program a rocket. And to make it out of sixty schools, I’m really proud of our work,” said Lee Russell.

Keianna Lester expressed, “It was super fun to meet the people from NASA (on Zoom); we get to learn a lot, like soldering. It’s burning wires together; it’s really exciting.”

The students will have a virtual showcase in May to present their creation and explain their experience in their own words. “They will send it to Future Engineers and this summer their flight box will go on an about 8-minute flight on the rocket-powered lander where what they built and programmed will run and record what is on the simulated surface,” said Graham.  “After its flight, it’s sent back [to us] and then they [the students] will get the raw data and they will look at that data and create a map and look for anything that may be unusual in depth or temperature and what the simulated moon surface is like. They will then be able to give feedback on what worked well and what could be improved and possibly work to get it fine-tuned to be more precise and help with landings and explorations on Mars and beyond in the future.”

Emersyn Hoff said, “This is the first time we’ve done something like this at school, working with NASA.  We got to solder yesterday, and we get to work with coding and programming.” 

“It’s the first time I’ve done something ‘big’ other than wrestling,” said Taylor Lym. “It’s a cool experience,” added Aubree Clifton.

“The students are learning how to work with others and problem solve and [learn] new skills. I love seeing them problem solve and use a variety of skills.  They get to meet professionals and learn to act in a professional manner as well,” added Graham.