St. Ursula Academy’s Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) Club has entered the NASA WEAR Challenge, a national competition for middle and high school students to design wearable radiation countermeasures for deep space exploration. According to NASA, the “WEAR Challenge addresses an authentic, current space exploration challenge to protect Artemis astronauts on deep space missions. Through Artemis, we will see the first woman and next man land on the Moon by 2024 and establish sustainable exploration with our commercial and international partners by 2028.”
The SUA team is one of 78 from across the nation invited to participate in the WEAR challenge. “The students will spend the next several weeks designing their protective gear and preparing to share their designs with NASA personnel. The top design teams will be asked to build a prototype and travel to NASA’s Langley Research Center to present their prototype to NASA personnel,” according to NASA’s official contest rules.
SUA’s team members are juniors Tiare Nicholas-Bublick (team leader), Mariah Oberhaus, and Madeline Bumpus, and sophomore Hannah Jeffrey. Science teacher and STEM Club advisor Jackie Kane said, “Since December, the team has met once or twice per week after school to learn about space radiation and ways to engineer a garment to protect astronauts on their long journey to Mars.”
To learn more about NASA WEAR, visit http://go.nasa.gov/nasa_wear.
Mariah Oberhaus '21, Tiare Nicholas-Bublick '21, Madeline Bumpus '21, and Hannah Jeffrey '22
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