Seniors Joshua Lewton and Douglas Graves have been competing in the StellarXplorers National Space Design competition ever since their freshman year, and this year they qualified for the semifinals.
The StellarXplorers competition challenges teams of students to “solve orbit planning, satellite component, and launch operation scenarios” through a series of online competitions. The semifinals run from Feb. 13-16 with the top 10 teams advancing to the in-person national finals in Denver.
A new competition record of 375 teams began the competition, which challenged the students to make a rocket online that held all the needed materials – and also was as cheap as possible. Teams received points based on how well it was built and the amount of money they had used.
“Each round they translate all of our stuff into a score, so our overall score from the three rounds was high enough to get us into the semifinals,” Graves said.
Only the top 30 percent of the teams made it to semifinals, with Graves and Lewton being among them.
“Nationals only take the top 10 teams, so I would hope to get there, but it’s a little bit harder because our team is so small,” Graves said.
The rules allow teams to have up to six members, but the Kingwood Park team ended up with only two students. They originally had three members on the team, but their third member switched schools in the middle of the competition.
The duo was not deterred by the size of their team, and their hard work impressed AFJROTC instructor Master Sergeant Anthony Bullock.
“They completely exceeded my expectations,” Bullock said. “There were schools with more members in their team, and it was against really good schools from all over the world. Just making it to the first round made me proud of them, and I felt like they had done what they came to do.”
Kingwood Park hopes to advance to the finals, where the top three teams are awarded educational grants. For Lewton and Graves, they are ready for the next challenge and have loved their four years of competing in the StellarXplorers design competition.
“The competition overall is super fun,” Lewton said. “It was really fun finding creative solutions with the rules that we were given.”
