NASA Bound 'Team Mercury' Presents To Millburn Board Of Education

MILLBURN, NJ - A team of Millburn High School students recruited by NASA after winning an App development challenge stopped by last week's Board of Educaton meeting to share their story.

The students are from the Space Exploration II program and were one of two winning teams chosen. This challenge, a new pilot program in the agency's Next Generation STEM Initiative, asked middle and high school teams to design an app to visualize three minutes of simulated test data in support of the June flight test of the Orion spacecraft's Launch Abort System (LAS), called Ascent Abort-2 (AA-2).

According to officials, the test is to demonstrate whether the LAS can send Orion and its crew a safe distance if an emergency arises during ascent to orbit. This flight test is a critical step to demonstrate Orion's safety as NASA leads the next steps of human exploration to the Moon and into deep space.

The two winning teams have been selected for an all-expense paid trip to the Kennedy Space Center at the end of June where they will meet with scientists and engineers and work with the team to possibly run their app with actual flight test data.

"Congratulations to 'Team Mercury' Darcy Gruer, Claire Yan, Sarah Rose, Max Koenig, Javier Coindreau, and Andrew Chen," Superintendent Christine Burton said. "Thanks to Challenge Lead Teacher John Yi, and Dave Farrell, Hilton Seibert, and Gabe Rhodes for their support in this mission."

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