News Release

Kathleen High Team Qualifies to Compete in the 2013 Student Astronaut Challenge

November 8, 2012

Kathleen High’s Central Florida Aerospace Academy (CFAA) team members Kolen Roberts, Alejandro Aybar-Mota, Steven Trowbridge, Killian Sweeney and Jamie Cook have qualified to compete in the 2013 Student Astronaut Challenge. They join six other teams set to compete at the state level.

The Student Astronaut Challenge provides an opportunity for students with similar interests to compete in aviation science and space exploration to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of problem solving. Students will also be given a chance to perform within a spacecraft flight simulator.

On Saturday, October 13, CFAA’s team members were accompanied by their parents and faculty advisor, George Bartuska to a testing site in Orlando, where they took a Regional Qualifier exam. The exam consisted of 100 multiple choice questions based on the Student Astronaut Challenge Manual. Exam topics probed students’ knowledge of space shuttle systems/operations, basic terrestrial flight operations, orbital and planetary spaceflight operations and other related topics. Seven five-person teams were selected from the top scorers. Organizers chose two teams from North Florida, two teams from Central Florida, and three teams from South Florida.

The teams will now compete in the State of Florida Student Astronaut Challenge scheduled to start Friday, March 8, 2013. For more information about the second annual Student Astronaut Challenge please visit: http://www.astronautchallenge.com/