Grant County students participate in aerospace program

MOSES LAKE - The Washington Aerospace Program selected four students from Grant and Adams counties to participate in a NASA-designed distance learning program.

Juniors Alexandria Morgan and Aaron Hayes from Lind High School, Benjamin Shoemake from Moses Lake High School and Austyn Kagele from Moses Lake Christian Academy will compete with 287 other Washington students for a chance at a six-day all-expense-paid summer residency at The Museum of Flight in Seattle.

"It's competitive based on their scores," says Melissa Edwards, Director of the Washington Aerospace Scholars Program. "They complete 10 lessons with essays, math problems and quizzes. We invite the top students to an all-expense paid trip to spend six days at the museum where they are charged with designing a human mission to Mars."

Now in its fifth year, the program seeks to promote the idea of enrolling students in math, science, technology and engineering programs.

From now until May, students will learn about the history of space exploration, the space shuttle, the international space station, the moon and Mars in their NASA-designed curriculum.

If selected for the summer residency program, students will have a very full schedule, says Edwards.

"There will be classes and tours through facilities such as Boeing and Aerojet," Edwards says. "Evenings have design challenges in rovers and landers. Students will build and launch rockets and design a method getting materials from the ground to low-earth orbit. They'll be very busy during the day." 

Austyn Kagele says he hopes to be one of the students selected for the summer program. Kagele says he is a good math student and enjoys reading science fiction as well as playing video games.

"Since I was a kid, I've always been interested in space programs and flight has always been one of my interests," Kagele says. "I'm looking at taking a class out at Big Bend to do their flight program after high school." 

Kagele says he would eventually like to go into engineering as a profession.

"I really want to do some flying. I am not sure what, but some job that involves flying." 

Aaron Hayes says he got into the program to learn more about engineering as well but isn't sure what he wants to do as a career just yet.

"My math teacher told me about engineering since he used to be one and this had to do with that." Hayes says. "I thought this sounded like it was pretty good deal. It's really interesting to know about space."   

Alexandria Morgan, who goes by Lexie Whitaker, is the only girl representing Central Washington in the program and says she hopes to be able to get scholarships for her participation.

"I like the essays, the topics are really cool and things I've never heard of like spin-off technology," Whitaker says. "It's really interesting to know that everything we use every day is put together by somebody." 

Whitaker says she's done very well on the assignments so far, and hopes to be selected for the summer program.

"I am excited about the designing rockets. It's exciting to see what you can create," says Whitaker. "Eventually, I want to go somewhere in the medical field. That uses a lot of math and science and I've also thought about being a computer tech." 

Students will find out mid-May if they have been selected for the summer residency, according to Edwards.

"The residency starts in June and applications for next year, the 2011-2012 year, will be available at the end of summer," says Edwards.