NASA's TechRise Challenge
A group of 5 GNA students won this year’s NASA TechRise Challenge.
Student teams from around the country wrote proposals to send experiments to the edge of space on a NASA weather balloon. The experiments will be exposed to the harsh conditions of the upper atmosphere for up to 6 hours, then returned to the classroom.
This year there were 720 submissions and a single winner was chosen from each state. GNA’s proposal titled ‘Soils in the Stratosphere’ was selected to be the Pennsylvania winner.
For our experiment, 3 soil samples will be exposed to the low pressure, low temperature, and high radiation environment of the Stratosphere and then returned to see if they are still able to support life.
Under the guidance of Mr. Fleury, the team will meet weekly with NASA engineers to construct the payload, and deliver it to NASA in mid May. The flight will take place over the summer, and the payloads returned shortly thereafter.
The students are:
Robert Miller
Jeremiah Montalvo
Alexandra Skillens
David Meck
Liam McGovern