MIDLAND, Texas — Higher Orbits and the Midland Development Corporation teamed up with Midland ISD for the Go For Launch! program on March 2-3.
This is the fourth year for MISD and the second year partnering with Higher Orbits.
Retired NASA astronaut Wendy Lawrence was on hand to meet students in grades eight through 12 from MISD at Goddard Junior High Thursday.
Go For Launch! uses space exploration to help get students interested in STEM, communication, leadership and more.
Program Director Michelle Lucas explained why STEM is more important than ever before.
"STEM is so important to everything in our society,” said Lucas. “We have more STEM jobs than we can possibly fill, but in a more esoteric fashion, STEM opens up doors for students. It gives them opportunities and a lot of possibilities. So, the more we can keep encouraging them to study science, technology, engineering and math, the more opportunity they are going to have."
Students are able to design their own space experiment and present it to a panel of judges. Winners will go on to compete against projects in the same division, and the overall winning experiment will be launched into space.