Four students from Pella High School traveled to the Johnson Space Center to participate in NASA’s Space Settlement Design Competition (SSDC).

They joined approximately 200 other students from NW Iowa and Texas for the competition. Zion Miller, Elizabeth Sales, Lindsey Hood, and Sarah Van Norden represented Pella.

Miller tells KNIA/KRLS News the competition is designed to provide students with experiences similar to those encountered by real engineers.

The competition teaches students to communicate, cope with stress, solve problems, work as a team, manage time, organize a monumental task, apply STEM skills, ask questions, assess possible solutions, evaluate economic costs, and evaluate quality of life on the settlement.

Students have 21 hours to complete a plan with a limit of 50 pages and 35 minutes to present their proposal, which are then presented to aerospace engineers who ask the students tough questions.

Students were placed in four teams and given a request for proposal from the futuristic Foundation Society. The future date invites students to think outside of the box about the technologies that could exist. The task this year was to design a mobile surface base on the planet Mercury.

Sarah Van Norden was a member of the team that won the competition, and will be the first ever Pella student to participate in the international competition at the Kennedy Space Station in Florida in July.

Tune into Let’s Talk Pella Monday to hear from the group.