NASA engages kids in STEM through national competition

The STEM Lab focuses on science, technology, engineering, and math, but it's creativity that got these students recognized by NASA. As soon as we close the circuit, that's going to start sending the electrons through the wire. See right here? These seventh graders are known to be a shy bunch, but they're confident. Our team has the brains to win. There you go. Yours worked. And they're creative, coming

up with solutions for future space missions. We came up with this idea that NASA is doing their Artemis missions, which involves going to the moon and sending of colonies there. We came up with this crazy idea of like, if people are living there in the near future, how would they get M's on vectors? Alright, let's see what else is in here guys. That idea landed them

a spot as one of the 60 finalists across the country chosen by NASA to participate in the NASA TechRice Student Challenge. The TechRice Student Challenge is a hands-on STEM experience for students in grades 6 through 12. And it allows students to go through exactly the same process of coming up with an idea, developing a payload, and doing a flight test that NASA researchers would do in

a similar situation. NASA Flight Opportunities Program Manager Danielle McCulloch says the challenge was initiated by NASA's desire to get students engaged in STEM at a young age. They're creative approach. And they're a believe to think about things a little bit differently is really important to us. Touch your batteries. You never expect the solutions that students come up with. When you have adults try to solve any

problem, you get the list of things you can't do. We can't do that. We can't do that. With kids, they're always like, what if we could do this? Just noff singers and engineering teacher who leads the STEM lab. You may laugh at the idea of shipping on Amazon packages, but Jess says they're helping to solve real-world problems. We're going to have to ship things back and

forth to the moon, and it can't be like now where it's thousands of dollars for every, every pound you send up to space. We were testing how different packaging materials react at shield radiation. And they'll get to test it in an actual NASA launch of a high altitude balloon that will go into the stratosphere, float for three hours and come back down. That is going to

test for their current. Both Jess and Danielle say student projects like these help young people know they can do STEM careers. Students may not think that they're good at math or science based on what's presented to them in the classroom, but when they have a project like this, they just flourish and really excel. Trust them to solve important problems and to engage in real work. So