You could say they are hitting new heights as winners of a NASA Aerospace Engineering contest.

On this episode of the Supercast, we head to JATC North to hear how four students will be working with NASA TechRise engineers over the next 18 months to bring an experiment they proposed to life. It is an experiment, with real world applications, that will be launched into the edge of space on one of NASA’s high altitude balloons, a dream come true for aspiring space engineers.

Audio Transcription

Student:
Now that we've won, we're going to be building some things that we can put in a box that they'll send up to the edge of space and we'll measure the amount that these different data storage units are going to... like what just happens to them.

Student:
It'll reach 60,000 feet

Student:
And we are going to test how the radiation and pressure there affects the electronics.

[Music]

Anthony Godfrey:
Hello and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. You could say they are hitting new heights as winners of a NASA Aerospace Engineering contest. On this episode of the Supercast, we head to JATC North to hear how four students will be working with NASA TechRise engineers over the next 18 months to bring an experiment they proposed to life. They'll be working on an experiment with real-world applications that will be launched using NASA's high-altitude balloons, a dream come true for these incredibly talented students.

[Music]

Anthony Godfrey:
We are here at the JATC North campus to talk with Amber Saffen and some of her students about the Aerospace Engineering program. Amber, thanks for talking with us today.

Amber Saffen:
Yeah, welcome. Welcome to our program.

Anthony Godfrey:
Tell me how you and your students are now involved with NASA.

Amber Saffen:
Yes, so our CTE coordinator right at the beginning of the school year sent an email our way that NASA has a competition called NASA TechRise where students can write proposals for an experiment to be sent up into the stratosphere, and so as part of my program, I was like, "Hey, we're the aerospace program. That seems pretty dang relevant." So fresh to the program, my students got in and they did some research and they put together some proposals of some things that useful experiments they thought would be good to send up there. And then just a couple months ago, I got an email that one of those proposals had been accepted. And so I'm here with four of my students and they wrote a proposal and now NASA will be working with them once a week for the next 18 weeks to build the proposal. Gave them, is going to provide $1,500 for them to buy the supplies, is going to help them learn how to do it, and then that will be shipped back to be go up on the WorldView balloon.

Anthony Godfrey:
Let's meet your students and have them describe to me what this experiment is all about. Introduce yourselves, tell us what grade you're in, and what school you're from.

Student:
All right. My name is Blake Bigler. I'm a senior at Mountain Ridge High School.

Student:
My name is Canyon Bullock, and I'm a senior at Herriman High School.

Student:
My name is Mason Rice, and I'm also a senior at Mountain Ridge High School.

Student:
My name is Zach Hull, and I'm a senior at Riverton High School.

Anthony Godfrey:
Someone tell me about this experiment, what's involved exactly. What will you learn from being a part of this?

Student:
Yeah, we created this proposal like six months ago, but basically what it is, is we designed an experiment where we are testing how data storage is affected and how it works in space with like radiation and lower pressure. So now that we've won, we're going to be building some things that we can put in a box that they'll send up to the edge of space and we'll measure the amount that these different data storage units are going to, like what just happens to them.

Anthony Godfrey:
So tell me, how do you send this up? How far up does it go? What is all that going to look like?

Student:
So what we will be doing is we will be taking different data storage types like hard drives, disk drives, flash drives, things like that, and we will put them in a box, which we will attach to a weather balloon.

Student:
It'll reach 60,000 feet and then once it reaches 60,000 feet then it'll gradually go down where they can pick up all the tests and then take them back to the facility.

Student:
And we are going to test how the radiation and pressure there affects the electronics.

Anthony Godfrey:
What's the theory? What do you think might happen once you send that information up? I assume you'll send a zip drive up as well, a couple of floppy disks.

[laughter]

Never mind. No, don't worry about it.

Student:
I don't know that a five and a quarter floppy would fit in the box.

Anthony Godfrey:
Oh, it's going to be that small.

Student:
It's not particularly large.

Anthony Godfrey:
That makes sense.

Student:
We have to use a SATA size disk drive because a standard five and a quarter would just be too much.

Student:
We think we're going to put different amounts of insulation around the drives. So we're thinking different materials.

Student:
Lead, aluminum, foil, things like that.

Student:
So we're just trying to stop the radiation from reaching the data encoding because otherwise the radiation can scramble that and then your data that you send up there is no longer useful.

Anthony Godfrey:
So is it the radiation and the altitude? You're measuring the impact of both on data storage. Is that right?

Student:
Yes. It will mostly be the radiation because that's what we'll be getting through into the storage. But the pressure will also be being tested on the other parts of the experiment.

Anthony Godfrey:
I understand they're going to send you some money for materials to conduct this experiment. Somebody want to speak to that?

Student:
On the subject of materials, we're currently in a storage crisis. Things like RAM and NVMe drives and things like that are all way more expensive, like three times, four times. So great timing.

Anthony Godfrey:
Well, if you change your mind, I do have some of the large and small floppy disks available in my home. And if you really want to take your experiment to the next level, just let me know. We can include that. Tell me what interested you in being part of the Aerospace Engineering Program to begin with.

Student:
Well, for me, my dad's a pilot at Delta, so I've always been kind of interested in aviation. And I also am pretty decent at math and science, and I like those things, I'd say. So I thought that I'd try to put them together and do aerospace engineering.

Anthony Godfrey:
I'm not sure I would be surprised that he's really decent, but I appreciate the humility. So that's pretty cool. So have you traveled lots of great places with those pilot flight benefits of your dad's?

Student:
Yeah, I've traveled some pretty cool places.

Anthony Godfrey:
Do you want to be a pilot, or what do you want to do with your knowledge and with your science and math skills?

Student:
Well, that's kind of what this class is doing for me, is I'm trying to figure out if this is something that I'd want to do. And I think that this opportunity to work with NASA has definitely, like, it's got me a lot more excited about aerospace engineering, and it's, a lot more interested in this now for sure.

Anthony Godfrey:
Wonderful. How about for you? Why did you decide to be part of this class?

Student:
I've been doing, like, taking engineering programs at JTEC for a while now, and I just thought that aerospace would be the next one. And I was like, that's pretty interesting, but it's been my favorite one so far. And I think it's been really cool learning about things that fly, and rocket ships, and airplanes, and everything that flies. I think it's all really cool.

Anthony Godfrey:
What other engineering classes have you taken here?

Student:
Engineering Principles, CAD Mechanical Design, Architecture, Civil Engineering. I was going to do Robotics, but I opted out on that one. But this is the coolest one so far.

Anthony Godfrey:
Okay, great. How about you?

Student:
I always wanted to be an engineer, but I didn't know which kind. This is my first engineering JTEC class. And I decided to go with aerospace because I really like NASA and SpaceX, and I think that planes and rocket ships are really cool. So I just decided to take this class, and this class inspired me to start my, well, not start, but I'm going to start my degree in mechanical engineering with an aerospace emphasis at BYU.

Anthony Godfrey:
And for other engineering programs, the sky's the limit, but the sky's not the limit for aerospace.

Student:
No, not for this one.

Anthony Godfrey:
And you want to continue your studies at BYU, ideally.

Student:
Yep.

Anthony Godfrey:
Wonderful. Well, I'm glad you're getting a start here. That's awesome. And it's great that you've been able to narrow that already to aerospace. How about you?

Student:
So I'm actually in aerospace and robotics right now.

Anthony Godfrey:
So flying robots is really your thing.

Student:
Yes. So I've always found both interesting. Like, I would take apart toys to figure out how they work, and rockets are just awesome. Ther...