Mission Accomplished! NESSP takes ROADS Challenge Top Teams to Kennedy Space Center

Each year, NASA's Northwest Earth and Space Sciences Pathways (NESSP) project hosts a national Rover Observation And Drone Survey (ROADS) challenge where teams of students in grades 4-12 work together to complete hands-on objectives related to NASA missions. Top teams that participated in 2019 and 2020 accomplished each of the objectives under difficult circumstances only to have to wait for their reward - a visit to a NASA center. Finally, this July, NESSP was able to make good on their promises, taking 10 teams (that’s 50 students and 10 mission advisors) that participated in the ROADS on Mars, ROADS Freestyle, and ROADS on Icy Worlds challenges to the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

At Kennedy, students and advisors toured the exhibits and viewed the space shuttle Atlantis and a Saturn V rocket. At the Exploration Station, students learned about internship opportunities, completed a hands-on engineering activity, and learned about growing plants on the ISS from Dr. Gioia Massa. Finally, on July 7th, students got to watch the successful launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket!

Many thanks to the Texas Space Grant Consortium and the Science Activation Program who helped support the travel of participants.

Learn more about getting involved in NESSP ROADS challenges including the upcoming Artemis ROADS challenge at www.nwessp.org.

The NESSP project is supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number 80NSSC 22M0006 and is part of NASA's Science Activation Portfolio. Learn more about NESSP: https://science.nasa.gov/science-activation-team/nessp