GNA CAMPUS— The NASA TechRise Student Challenge is a nationwide contest hosted by NASA’s Flight Opportunities program.
According to NASA.gov, “Students in sixth to 12th grades attending a U.S. public, private, or charter school – including those in U.S. territories – are challenged to team up with their schoolmates to design an experiment under the guidance of an educator. Teams can submit ideas for experiments to fly on a suborbital flight platform.” Each team received $1,500 to build their experiments, a flight box to house them, technical support from Future Engineers, and an assigned spot for their experiments on a high-altitude balloon flight test scheduled for summer 2025.
Anthony Fleury, a science teacher at Greater Nanticoke Area High School, is the advisor to the group of students representing GNA. The students involved are Jeremiah Montalvo, Alexandra Skillens, David Meck, Robert Miller, and Liam McGovern. They’ve designed an experiment titled “Soils in the Stratosphere.” The purpose of this experiment is to better understand how plants may grow in Martian soil. NASA’s current goal is to send people to Mars. This inquiry will contribute to finding out whether or not plants will be able to grow on ‘Alien soil.’
The team has gathered various samples from around the US, including nutrient-rich soil from Wichita, Kansas, desert soil from the Sonora Desert, and ancient volcanic soil from northern Arizona. These samples will be placed in a clear plastic container and attached to a large NASA weather balloon. The samples will spend about 4-5 hours in the stratosphere (about 90,000 feet) before returning to Earth. The team has chosen to do this because the low temperature and pressure, combined with the high levels of cosmic radiation, will likely kill off the needed organic material in the soil. Once the samples are returned to GNA, they will be analyzed to see if the organic material survived.
Congratulations to the GNA team for earning their chance to experiment with NASA.
More information on the NASA TechRise Student Challenge can be found Here.
