CTHS students reaching for the stars in NASA competition

A student team from Mat-Su Career and Technical High School (CTHS) recently won a national NASA STEM competition, the TechRise Student Challenge, joining 59 other winning teams from across the country.

This year’s challenge was to design a science or technology experiment that could be tested on either a NASA-sponsored high-altitude balloon flight or rocket-powered lander.

The CTHS students’ experiment, titled ‘Cosmic Radiation and CO2 Emissions Research’, will use a Geiger counter and a Non-Dispersive Infrared (NDIR) device to measure levels of radiation and gases in the atmosphere as the rocket-powered lander travels over the test course.

Courtney Neuffer, Engineering Teacher at CTHS and the coach for the NASA engineering team gushes about her team, saying: “My students are awesome and worked incredibly hard to be a part of this amazing opportunity.”

Neuffer explains that NASA sent everything the students will need to learn how to program and collect data, and that while she had her own plan for what to do, her team had other ideas for the project.

“They voted on it, and they didn’t like my ideas, so they went with their own,” she said. Team leaders Senior Jennifer Selyutina and Freshman Aedan Harris, said that the team felt creativity was the key to an experiment.

For the first part of the experiment, measuring cosmic radiation, there will be a Geiger counter uncovered, along with a second Geiger counter wrapped in material that will be made from recyclable materials that will help shield future life forms and help grow plants, be able to keep livestock, to sustain humanity on any surface.

“The recyclable materials will also make it less expensive,” says Harris, explaining that current materials available now are far too costly.

The two Geiger counters will fit into the container supplied by NASA, and the hope is that the data recovered will show an appreciable difference in the cosmic radiation that’s being experienced now.

“You need to have cosmic ray shielding because the high-energy particles in space just hit you instead of going into our atmosphere and diffusing,” said Neuffer.

Once the students have created their experiment, the equipment will be launched via a rocket-powered lander in Southern California.

“Southern California will be much more beneficial for this because we don’t have a lot of radiation here in Alaska, even in the summer when the sun is out, it’s just not very high overhead.”

The second part of their project, utilizing the NDIR sensors to measure CO2 levels within the environment, is still under development. The NDIR uses infrared lasers to identify the different pollutant particles within the atmosphere, helping researchers further understand the impacts of climate change while also helping develop sustainable transportation for future space exploration.

“We haven’t exactly decided what the second component is yet because you cannot just measure CO2 levels and not have anything else to measure it with. We are thinking about light, temperatures, maybe even UV rays, but we will use the NDIR sensors to measure the levels,” says Selyutina.

The team still has a lot of work ahead, including making sure that the components, the wiring, all the pieces are structurally sound to withstand the vibrations of the rocket and won’t interfere with another team’s experiment. They also have only $1500.00 to complete their project

The students will now work through the remainder of the school year building out their experiments with the support of professional engineers, in preparation for a 2-minute flight test this summer.

“We will be working every Tuesday with NASA engineers, who are all in New York, which we know is after hours for them. And this will be launched in June, most likely the second week, but they have not yet given a specific date,” says Neuffer.

While the students cannot go to California to watch the lander in-person, they will be able to see it via Zoom and NASA will also send the data collected back next year so the students can then disseminate the information and determine what lies ahead.

“This is such a great opportunity for the students. To say they were part of a NASA competition and to work with NASA engineers.” And while there might not be a scholarship or monetary prize, the experience for these students was too good not to do.

“The main reward is knowledge, being educated on this, and gives a more broader perspective on things. It gives you something on your resume that will set you apart,” says Harris, who aspires to attend the Naval Academy, become a test pilot, and later an astronaut, while co-leader Selyutina is looking to pursue a major in Aerospace Engineering.

“I’ve always been interested in rockets and the components in space. I just really love it,” she says. She plans to attend Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, then see where here pursuits take her.

TechRise is a STEM challenge for 6th -- 12th graders that offers students the invaluable opportunity to design and test their own innovative solutions for space exploration and the study of Earth while getting hands-on insight into the payload design and flight test process, inspiring a deeper understanding of space exploration, Earth observation, coding, electronics, and the value of test data.