NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

On May 6, 2006, students from Caro High School in Caro, Mich., prepared a rocket they had designed and built for launch. But not only was their rocket on the launch pad, so were they.

Image to right: The rocket the team built for the Student Launch Initiative carried a scientific payload that collected gas samples during flight. Credit: Caro High School

The students represented their school in the NASA Student Launch Initiative, an annual event for the nation's best high school rocket scientists. Four of the students who participated in the SLI event have gone on to pursue college degrees in technical fields related to NASA's missions.

Each year, the top student rocketry teams in the nation are invited to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, in Huntsville, Ala., to participate in the culminating event for the Student Launch Initiative -- the launches. The center organizes separate versions of the initiative for high school and university students.

During the academic year, students design, build and test these powerful, reusable rockets. They must also plan and implement a science experiment that will be carried on the rocket and conducted during flight. The Student Launch Initiative is not a competition, but rather an opportunity for some of the nation's best student rocketry teams to come together while working on their ambitious rocket projects. SLI supports NASA's goal of attracting and retaining students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines.

Image to left: A member of the Caro team tests the rocket's parachute. Credit: Caro High School

The Caro students were invited to participate in SLI based on their performance in the 2005 Team America Rocketry Challenge. The team finished in 13th place in the 2005 TARC competition. TARC is a national competition in which students build rockets that fly to a given altitude and stay aloft, as precisely as possible, for a given time which changes each year with the new challenge. The rockets carry a raw egg, which must be returned unbroken to the ground. Each year, the top 25 teams from the Team America competition are invited to participate in the Student Launch Initiative. Of those, 11 teams participated in the 2006 SLI launch.

For the Student Launch Initiative, the Caro team built a rocket that was 8 feet and 4 inches tall. The rocket reached an altitude just shy of the one-mile goal, at 4,800 feet. The rocket's science experiment payload collected gas samples during flight to be analyzed after its return to Earth.

Five students were on Caro's Flying Tigers rocketry team: Brett Cockerill, Richard Lester, Brad Parker, James Roesner and Kyle Smith. Since the SLI event, the team members have graduated from high school, and four of them are pursuing degrees in engineering.

Related Resources + Student Launch Initiative + NASA Education Web Site + Team America Rocketry Challenge

Richard Lester was the first to graduate, in 2006, and is studying aviation at Western Michigan University. The remaining students graduated in the spring of 2007. Brett Cockerill will be attending the University of Michigan to study aerospace engineering, and hopes to specialize in propulsion. James Roesner will be studying aerospace engineering at Embry-Riddle University in Florida. Kyle Smith will be attending Michigan Technical University to study computer engineering. Brad Parker, the only member of the team not to pursue engineering, is a liberal arts major at Michigan State University.

Participation in NASA's Student Launch Initiative was a major milestone for the Caro students, but with the paths many of them are pursuing, SLI may not be the last time they launch rockets with NASA.

David Hitt/NASA Educational Technology Services