Mission Success

Maclay’s Student Astronaut Challenge Excels At The Annual Competition

Photo courtesy Lauren Conn

From Feb. 5 to Feb. 7, Maclay’s Student Astronaut Challenge Team competed in the annual competition at the Kennedy Space Center in Titusville, Fla. Student Astronaut Challenge is an aerospace science competition designed to simulate real astronaut training and mission scenarios. 

This year’s Maclay team included freshmen Krish Patel and sophomore Tucker Couch serving as mission control, sophomore Emmie Kutter as mission director, junior Michael Boulous as mission commander, junior Keya Patel as mission pilot and co-captain and junior Lauren Conn as mission engineer and co-captain.

“Ms. Barton inspired me to join the Astronaut Challenge team after I did it in middle school,” Krish Patel said. “[I enjoyed the] thinking under pressure and teamwork.”

Teams of six begin the competition by taking a qualifying test. Their combined scores are then averaged to determine rankings for advancement to the final challenges, where they compete in four hands-on events. 

At the in-person finals, the team competed in the Design Challenge, Landing Challenge, Engineering Challenge and Space Flight Simulation Challenge. The Design Challenge required the team to identify a biological challenge and propose a solution, along with creating a mission patch to represent their project. The Maclay team’s experiment studied whether antioxidant vitamins can protect yeast cells from UV-C radiation. In the Landing Challenge, members worked in pairs, with one person piloting a landing simulation while the other handled communication. The Engineering Challenge had members working to escape a breakout room without seeing one another, relying solely on communication. The Space Flight Simulation Challenge had the team go through a full mission checklist, simulating the flight process from pre-launch to landing. 

“The hardest part of the competition was the Space Flight Simulation Challenge finals,” Krish Patel said. “They can give you random emergencies, like oxygen leaks, that you have to fix, or you have to abort the mission.”

Preparation for the competition took place over many weeks, with team members meeting outside of school to research, rehearse scripts and practice simulations using a laptop and a joystick. As the competition approached, practices increased to a few hours a week. 

The team won first place in the Design Challenge for their experiment, first place in the Landing Challenge and third place in the Space Flight Simulation Challenge. Juniors Keya Patel, Boulous, and Conn were awarded the Apollo 13 Award for best flight crew.

“My favorite memory was winning first and working with my team on the Engineering Challenge,” Keya Patel said.