During their Spring Break, 40 Beverly Vista Middle School (BVMS) students traveled to Huntsville, Alabama to attend a Space Camp at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center – the official visitor center for NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, which is the U.S. gov- ernment’s civilian rocketry and spacecraft propulsion research center.
The immersive camp was geared towards students in advanced science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) classes, as well as those in the advanced aerospace classes. Throughout the week, students underwent astronaut training on the 1/6th gravity chair, the Five Degrees of Freedom simulator, and the multi-Axis Trainer. Middle school students launched simulated missions to the International Space Station, the moon, and Mars where they worked as a team to confronted differ- ent mission scenarios in flight. Campers also designed and launched their own model rocket, learned about space hardware, built a heat shield for atmospheric re-entry, and learned about commercial space flight com- panies like SpaceX.
