As NASA Scientists explore the earth’s atmosphere to learn more about the high-altitude environment and its impact on climate change, Westminster High School students will be working alongside making a documentary about the mission and creating their experiments to be used in the research project. The partnership will take students to California in December and the east coast in February.

The work is tied to NASA’s five-year research campaign using the ER-2 High Altitude Airborne Science Aircraft and will involve students in the Aerospace and Video Production pathways. NASA describes the two aircraft as flying laboratories that collect information about” earth resources, celestial observations, atmospheric chemistry and dynamics, and oceanic processes. The aircraft are also used for electronic sensor research and development, satellite calibration, and satellite data validation.”

The high school students from both pathways will collaborate with NASA to interview scientists, document the work, and edit a documentary about the mission. Career Technical Education (CTE) teachers Robbie Ferguson and Chris Williams will assist the students with their work.

In addition to the documentary, aerospace students will create their own “payload” using weather tracking instruments they built in the classroom that will be flown by airplane to log the data. The information from the WHS payload will be compared with that of NASA scientists.

WHS students conducted a similar experiment using a weather balloon in January 2021. The original partnership came from a CTE advisory board member with ties to NASA. That relationship evolved into this one-of-a-kind project that will play out over the next several months.

“We could not be more honored to be a part of this project, and it is all due to the amazing dedication of our CTE teachers,” said Lottie Wilson, Administrator of the Career Technical Education program.