Student rocketeers high-five one another as their team heads out in pursuit of a touched-down flight vehicle May 17 during the “launchfest” that concluded the 2013-14 NASA Student Launch rocketry competition. Held in the alien landscape of the Bonneville Salt Flats in Tooele County, Utah, the event included rocket launched by 16 student teams from 15 states. Each launched a vehicle of their own design, complete with three working science and engineering payloads. The annual NASA education event is designed to inspire young people to pursue studies and careers in the “STEM” fields — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — and to raise their interest in a much larger launch vehicle: NASA’s Space Launch System, the nation’s next flagship, set to carry new exploration missions into the solar system in the coming decades. The NASA Student Launch competition is organized by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., and sponsored by ATK Aerospace Group of Magna, Utah. Organizers will name the grand-prize-winning school team in late May. For more information, visit https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/studentlaunch/home/index.html.
Image credit: MSFC/Dusty Hood