Long Beach 1st Grader A Semifinalist In NASA Competition
The 6-year-old girl's project proposed exploring the largest of Saturn's moons, Titan. Katerine, a 6-year-old Long Beach girl, has been named a semifinalist in NASA's STEM competition, the Power to Explore Challenge. She submitted her mission to land on Titan's largest lake, Kraken Mare, using a spacecraft powered by NASA's radioisotope power systems (RPS). Katerine plans to use this ship to collect soil and mineral samples. Once on the lake, she will send "Fishy bots" down to take pictures and drill holes to collect samples. The competition, which received 1,787 submissions from 48 states and Puerto Rico, will decide on the finalist on April 8.
Published : 2 months ago by Rachel Barnes in Science
Katerine submitted her mission in NASA's STEM competition, the Power to Explore Challenge. The 6-year-old was named a semifinalist in the competition for her work detailing how she plans to collect soil and mineral samples from Titan. In her spaceship, named Chicken-fly, she will make the seven-year trip to land on Titan's largest lake Kraken Mare.
"Too far way? No worries. My spacecraft is powered by NASA’s radioisotope power systems (RPS). It’s a nuclear battery that can last for 14+ years. RPS is also equipped with heater units that produce heat to keep us surviving in extreme cold weather of -180℃ on Titan," Katerine wrote in her project. Once Katerine and her crew has landed on the lake, she plans to send "Fishy bots" down to the lake bed to take pictures and drill holes to collect samples.
"Our purpose is to learn how Lake Kraken forms. I bet it was formed by an ice volcanic eruption, and our samples will help me prove it," Katerine wrote in her project. The Power to Explore Challenge offered students like Katerine the opportuity to learn more about space power systems and imagine how they could use their own superpowers to energize their success.
This year's competition received 1,787 submissions from 48 states and Puerto Rico. Only 45 semifinalists were selected to move on in the competition. Finalists will be announced on April 8 in celebration of the total solar eclipse. “It has been so exciting to see how many students across the nation have submitted essays to NASA’s Power to Explore Challenge,” said Carl Sandifer, program manager of the Radioisotope Power Systems Program at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. “We have
been thrilled to read their creative RPS-powered mission concepts and have been inspired learning about their many ‘superpowers’ that make them the bright future of NASA – the Artemis Generation.”
Topics: Space, NASA