Western Aerospace Scholars

Western Aerospace Scholars is a non-profit program, in partnership with the Museum of Flight, University of Washington, and NASA, for high school sophomores and juniors with an interest in aerospace. In my junior year of high school, my astronomy teacher recommended me for this program. I completed a ten-week online course with a final project, which depending on my performance in the course would make me eligible to participate in a six-day summer residency. I learned about the solar system, space phenomena, and astrophysics during the course, then applied what I learned to assignments about astronomical research, off-world missions, and space experiments. I was also able to earn five University of Washington natural science credits for the class ESS 102: Space & Space Travel.

My hard work paid off and I was selected for the summer residency to work in a team mentored by professionals to complete an aerospace-related project. For the 2019 WAS summer session, our mission was to plan a crewed mission to Mars. I joined the “Working There” team that would determine how the crew would get around the surface of Mars, obtain necessary materials in-situ, and what science experiments they would perform. In addition to working on this project, we also got to tour the Boeing factory in Everett and visit the University of Washington's rocketry facilities. The summer residency concluded with each group presenting their findings and proposals for this mission. Participating in this program helped me develop my research and technical writing skills, and also taught me a lot about the difficulties that could arise when coordinating between different teams and trying to get everyone's ideas to work together to create a single cohesive product (the crewed mission, in this case).