By Brooklyn Malone

A Dodson High School student team was able to view the launch and landing of the payload they created for the NASA TechRise Challenge.  Members gathered in the classroom of sponsor Casey Thomas to watch the event via Zoom on Tuesday afternoon, August 20.

This flight launched from Mojave, California, aboard a NASA rocket. The payload that this group of Dodson High School students built was successful during flight. The payload was launched on a 100 by 100 simulated lunar surface. The students involved in this build are Noah Box, Nathan Underwood, Charlie Buckley, Garrett Jones, Madelyn Cotton, Brooklyn Malone, Kayleigh Fredrick, Harlen Malone and led by teacher Casey Thomas. 

Noteworthy is that of the many school teams that applied to participate in NASA’s TechRise Challenge, only 15 qualified to be included in this Mojave launch.

This is such an exciting milestone for this team. They put in much diligent and collaborative work into building such a flight-worthy experiment. Their payload is officially on its way back to them. Once they receive their payload they will be able to view their flight data analysis.