When STEM Power formed one ordinary Saturday morning, only two team members – twin sisters Cindy and Wendy Shi – knew each other.
The team consisted of five high school students who, like dozens of their peers, gathered in a conference room at aerospace manufacturer Orbital ATK’s Dulles headquarters on Jan. 14 for the first day of Go For Launch, a three-day event run by the nonprofit Higher Orbits to generate student interest in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).
The students were tasked with designing an experiment that could be conducted in outer space and presenting their team’s proposal to a panel of judges at the end of the Go For Launch program.