“Spacecraft” by Salcedo students for NASA

Five hours of work per day for five months was the time that 10 students from Dr. Miguel Canela Lazaro’s Scientific High School, located in the municipality of Salcedo, province of Hermannas Mirabal, invested in designing and building the vehicle in which they won one of the categories in the Human Exploration Challenge (HERC) competition. International National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

This is Astromóvil, a three-dimensional instrument designed by fourth, fifth and sixth high school students to collect water samples in “space”. The team consisted of Ashley Severino, Javier Mordan, Yerlin Duarte, Aidan Peña, Inmanuel Solano, Christopher Mercado, Maria Bonilla, Darla Castillo, Melvin Nunez and Ilhein Duarte.

Students used iron, aluminum, rubber and other materials to assemble the “spacecraft.”

Professor Waldo Gonzalez, one of the group’s mentors, explained: “With regards to the assembly, we have moved to the workshops of the Armed Forces Vocational School in La Vega.” The rover is driven by two students who must complete a series of obstacles.

The project, in which they invested about 150,000 pesos, was evaluated through videos shown to NASA via digital platforms. “We are competing with centers in the United States and other countries that have invested thousands of dollars in their projects … miracles can be done with few resources,” said Caterina Clemente, Director of Liceo Científico, Dr. Miguel Canela-Lazaro.

Liceo Científico students, Dr Miguel Canela Lázaro, have participated in the international competition since 2018, except for the year 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. In her third participation, he became the first Dominican high school team to win the competition, considered the most important in the world for high school students.

NASA’s Rover Challenge is an annual competition for college and high school students that encourages research and development of new technologies for manned space mission planning.

“As a team, we are very pleased to be the first secondary-level institution in the Dominican Republic to participate and be awarded in a category of NASA,” says Maria Bonilla, a fifth-grade student.

Aidan Peña, also a fifth grader in high school, explains that the hardest part of the Astromobile design and manufacture process was convincing the jury members, in English, that they were the authors of the project. “It’s a little more complicated than it might seem at first glance,” said the young student.

Eight years ago, the high school began teaching according to the STEAM model (English acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics), and already the campus shows important recognition: the Certificate as Center for Academic Excellence from the Ministry of Education and the Ercilia Pepín Award for Teaching Excellence from the Presidency in 2018 and recognition Reduca (Latin American Education Network) for innovative practices in education 2017. The campus led by Caterina Clemente was awarded in the Solutions for the Future competitions, the program through which Samsung Latin America seeks to encourage logical and scientific thinking and creativity among young students, and the first global challenge And others.

The rover, also known as the Astromobile, is a space exploration vehicle designed to move over the surface of a planet or other astronomical object. Some astronomical vehicles are designed to carry crew members during manned space flights; Others were partially or completely autonomous motor vehicles.

Five hours of work per day for five months was the time that 10 students from Dr. Miguel Canela Lazaro’s Scientific High School, located in the municipality of Salcedo, province of Hermannas Mirabal, invested in designing and building the vehicle that they won in one of the categories in the International Human Exploration Challenge (HERC) Of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

This is Astromóvil, a three-dimensional instrument designed by fourth, fifth and sixth high school students to collect water samples in “space”. The team consisted of Ashley Severino, Javier Mordan, Yerlin Duarte, Aidan Peña, Inmanuel Solano, Christopher Mercado, Maria Bonella, Darla Castillo, Melvin Nunez and Ilhein Duarte.

Students used iron, aluminum, rubber bands, and other materials to assemble the “spacecraft.”

Professor Waldo Gonzalez, one of the group’s mentors, explained: “With regards to the assembly, we have moved to the workshops of the Armed Forces Vocational School in La Vega.” Driving the Rover, two students must complete a series of obstacles.

The project, in which they invested about 150,000 pesos, was evaluated through videos shown to NASA via digital platforms. “We are competing with centers in the United States and other countries that have invested thousands of dollars in their projects … miracles can be done with few resources,” said Caterina Clemente, Director of Liceo Científico, Dr. Miguel Canela-Lazaro.