NASA Design Contest

The members of the honors math society at Memorial High School spent a sleepless Saturday evening recently as the team took part in the Space Settlement Design Competition held at Houston’s Johnson Space Center.

The students, who are all members of the Mu Alpha Theta math society, worked the weekend of Oct. 12-13 inside the NASA’s Building 9 under the direction of a real engineer, who also functioned as a student team chief executive officer.

For the contest, many students pulled an all-night session. “Ninety percent of the students did not sleep Saturday night. It was pretty intense competition, and the students loved the big dose of reality that this competition provided,” reported calculus teacher Phil Harter.

“I was really surprised how much the students liked the competition experience,” he also said.

Competing students were all asked to make a specific proposal for a space colony. A team of engineers listened to a 40-minute oral presentation. They also read all group proposals before choosing a winning student team.

 Memorial High students who took part in the NASA weekend competition included Rebecca Grekin, Malina Maharana, Michael Ju, Sunny Kim, Anthony XU and Brooke Berry.