Durango High School students have won the NASA TechRise Challenge for the second year in a row! After presenting their plans for a rocket-powered lander, students will begin working on the official prototype under the name “Project Helios.”
Students will have a chance to test their experiments on a NASA-sponsored commercial suborbital flight platform.
The proposal submitted for Project Helios met the requirements for a winning rocket-powered lander: the ability to fly for approximately two minutes at an altitude of 80 feet over a test field designed to look like the moon’s surface.
As a winning team, the students have been awarded:
- $1,500 to build the experiment
- A flight box in which to build it
- An assigned spot to test their experiment on a NASA-sponsored flight
- Technical support during the experiment phase from NASA’s “Future Engineers” advisors, who will help students learn the skills they need to turn their experiment idea into reality.
Last year, the school’s Space Force JROTC program students won the NASA TechRise Challenge with “Project Nighthawk.”
This year, Durango High School’s Space Force program recruited students from other programs on campus to be part of the winning team. Students will work together in groups of 4-5 teams to create the winning prototype to present to NASA for Project Helios. Together, Chief Timothy Jordan and Lieutenant Colonel Jason W. Kimbel will guide students through a competitive effort to complete the mission of Project Helios.
Photo Credit: Xander Luber-Decena, Durango High School Video Production
