Team of North Allegheny students competing in final round of StellarXplorers National Space Design Competition

A team of five North Allegheny High School students is competing in the final round of a national contest that allows students to explore rocket science.

The StellarXplorers National Space Design Competition, which is organized by the Air Force Association, began with more than 350 teams. The North Allegheny Air Force Junior ROTC team is one of 10 teams traveling to Houston to compete in the final round April 21-23. The team is the only one from the eastern United States to make it to the finals.

The team already made it through three qualifying rounds and a semi-final round, during which students used simulation software to tackle prompts asking them to determine the best solutions to hypothetical questions about launching rockets and choosing components for satellites.

“They put these students in the role of a contractor,” said Chief Master Sergeant Terry Speer, who organizes the team as part of the school’s Junior ROTC program.

They are then given a scenario to tackle. For example, he said, they may be tasked with launching a satellite that would predict the migration patterns of salmon off the coast of the Pacific Ocean, monitor sharks off the coast of Australia and detect butterflies in South America.

“They have to be able to put a satellite in orbit with the right information and pieces and parts to it that would perform to their best of their abilities,” he explained.

During its time in Houston, the team will tour the Johnson Space Center, compete in the eight-hour competition, take individual quizzes testing knowledge of the topics and brief experts about solutions to the scenario the team has been given.

Winning teams receive a cash prize and a trophy.

The competition also teaches team members valuable life skills.

“I want to go into engineering as a career. Obviously this is a very good competition for that,” said Dean Simon, a junior who serves as team commander. “That ability to analyze a problem critically over a moderately long period of time and come up with a detailed solution is invaluable to any career field.”

The team — consisting of Simon, a junior, along with junior Charlie Pallerino and sophomores Kylie Walk, Conor Griffin and Jacob Collins — also learns to communicate and collaborate, because no one member could complete the entire scenario alone, Simon said.

“I’m really proud that we’ve all been able to work together to achieve this. If we were missing any one component of our team, we wouldn’t have been able to make it,” he said.

This is Simon’s third year competing in the program. Last year, he said, the team placed 20th in the nation.

This is the district’s second trip to the national finals, Speer said. In 2019, NA took a team to Colorado Springs to compete in the final round.

Just making it to the finals, Speer said, is “quite the accomplishment.”

“The skill sets needed to do this are certainly critical thinking, common sense, math and some engineering, and to be able to communicate and lead others,” he said.

The team has been preparing for about seven months, Simon said. Members study for the competition by solving sample scenarios and studying academic information that will be included on a quiz as part of the final contest. High school students study the same text book that new candidates at the Air Force Academy use, Speer said.

The team doesn’t know the specific scenario they’ll be tasked with addressing until the competition starts, but Simon said, practice helps them anticipate what they may face.

“You just gain experience through doing it so many times,” he said.

The competition will take place April 22. Then, students will brief scientists and other experts on their solutions April 23 before a winner is announced.