Two Hampton Roads high schools will soon have their creations judged by NASA to see if they make it aboard the International Space Station. One is a food recipe for astronauts. The other is hardware for the space station.
Both projects are part of a NASA program called HUNCH, or High school students United with NASA to Create Hardware.
NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, hosted a preliminary culinary challenge March 5, where two schools cooked up a breakfast entrée. The shrimp and grits with gouda cheese dish from Phoebus High School in Hampton made it to the final competition at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston scheduled for April 26.
Their work will be judged by Johnson Food Lab personnel, industry professionals, the space station program office, and astronauts for quality and taste. They’ll also be rated on a research paper and presentation video. The winning entree will be created by the Johnson Space Food Lab and sent up to the space station for astronauts to enjoy.
Space Hardware
Langley also hosted a critical design review March 6, when four schools showed off the real-world products they fabricated to tackle challenges faced by astronauts living in space. The team from Poquoson High School in Poquoson, Virginia, was selected as a finalist and faces a final design and prototyping review April 25 at Johnson.
The hardware includes a pin kit, can squisher, exercise harness, crew reminder tool, location app tool, and hygiene caddy. Many of the hardware projects are items personally requested by space station crew.
The North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, who also presented their projects at Langley, will join Poquoson High to present their works at Johnson. The projects the team from the Durham-based school had were an augmented reality object identification annotation tool, automatic location stowage system, and a single point exercise harness.
“The HUNCH Program can change the trajectory of a student’s life, by providing various avenues beyond the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) field and opportunities to participate in the global effort to research in space,” said Yolanda Watford Simmons, manager of Langley’s HUNCH program.
In 2015, a culinary team from Phoebus High won the culinary challenge and their entrée, Jamaican rice and beans with coconut milk, is now included in an astronaut cookbook. Read more on their success at:
For more information on HUNCH, visit:
Eric Gillard
NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia 23681
757-864-7423
eric.s.gillard@nasa.gov