INDIANAPOLIS — A group of seventh graders at New Palestine Junior High School is one of dozens of teams across the U.S. to win a national NASA STEM competition.
The TechRise Student Challenge gives students from sixth to 12th grade an opportunity to design, build and test their own innovative solutions for space exploration.
The goal is to inspire a deeper understanding of space exploration, Earth observation, coding, electronics, and test data.
Abi Maple, Gwen Melby, Jianna Tweedy and Layla Ratliff created a high-altitude balloon, named "Sparky 1," with the help of their science teacher, John Alter.
"I've always loved science and space and I've wanted to be a part of NASA for a while now," said Maple.
“I've always liked building and just doing things with my hands," said Melby.
The invention monitors the deteriorating ozone. They want to send the balloon into the stratosphere to collect samples of the ozone. Samples will go to a NASA lab for testing in hopes the molecules can be recreated.
"Once the ozone layer is gone, that means radiation can basically kill the human population," Maple said.
After submitting the proposal last fall, the group learned they were among 60 finalists chosen to move on to the next round.
"We definitely were not expecting to get chosen,” said Jianna Tweedy.
NASA awarded the winning teams $1,500 dollars to build the spacecraft and they will meet with scientists from NASA who well help guide them through the process.
"I think failure is a good thing,” said Layla Ratliff. “In science you can always come back and learn. But It would be really good if we could come back and win this without failure."
They hope their story will be a lesson to others to never give up.
"Don't stop,” said Maple. “Because we met a lot of challenges … but we never stopped."