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If you’re ever in North Medford High School and suddenly find yourself in a place that looks like NASA’s engineering division, don’t worry; you didn’t take a wrong turn. It’s just astronomy teacher Robert Black’s classroom. The computer models and rocket parts being built, analyzed and fine-tuned by a group of high school-aged engineers aren’t anything that can make it into the stratosphere and beyond. Actually, the rockets at the heart of the senior projects for these 11 students have a very specific height they’re being built to reach: 856 feet. Oh, and the rocket has to return its flight crew (three raw eggs representing astronauts) back to the Earth intact. All of this has to be done in about 45 seconds — anywhere from 43 to 46, really — according to the Team America Rocketry Challenge website. The goal in meeting those parameters is the national Team America Rocketry Challenge competition, held in the Plains, Virginia, which is located just west of Washington, D.C., contest officials said. To be one of the 100 teams picked for the national contest, North Medford teams will need to conduct several test flights and two official qualifying flights where they must meet the necessary parameters. At work on the challenge since September, the teams have been progressing along at a good clip. “All of the teams, since we’ve been working so long, we’re not really in a time crunch,” said 17-year-old senior Alice Lulich. “We’re right on schedule.” Those qualifying flights will be judged by Dave Bloomsness, who heads up the Southern Oregon Skywatchers astronomy group and is also a member of the National Association of Rocketry. “He is all business,” Black said. Qualification scores are due April 8, and finalists are announced a few days later. The actual competition is May 18. So, t-minus a few months. Students recognize the challenge but are up to it. “Trying to nail down all the moving parts of this rocket,” said 17-year-old senior Gabby Parks “There’s a height requirement; there’s a time requirement; there’s a weight requirement; there’s a payload. There are a lot of different aspects that we weren’t really sure how to approach, but we’ve been able to divvy up a lot of the work, and we’ve been learning along the way. It’s been a challenge, but it’s been really fun.” Black came up with the idea to pursue the competition following his involvement with the Eclipse Ballooning Project, a NASA-headed endeavor where teams of high school and college students across the U.S. launched high altitude balloons adorned with cameras to record the 2017 total solar eclipse from the edge of space in real time. He thought about continuing in similar high altitude ballooning projects, specifically one called Sky Calculus where high altitude balloons are launched with gamma ray sensors attached. “Then I thought, ‘That’s so mentor-intensive,’” Black said. “To actually do that and do that right and be successful, you need a lot of help. And all the mentor guys in the balloon project were all great, but I was trying to think of something I could do here, and I could mentor them, and maybe bring in some help now and again, but something I could handle by myself.” A longtime astronomy teacher, Black has long been interested with rocketry and has sponsored past teams. He decided to take his role up a notch, encouraging his students who had done well at his three-week engineering project to keep their interest in the subject alive and take it to the next level. For some students, it’s a dream come true. “Ever since I was little, I’ve always been interested in space,” said 17-year-old senior Annalysa Murray while donning a NASA sweatshirt. “(Mr. Black) brought up at the end of the year the project, and I didn’t know what I was going to do for my senior project for the longest time. I was like, ‘This is it.’” The 11 students making up the three North Medford teams — the Martians, Space Babes and Quasar — have been hard at work for the duration. They used SpaceCAD 6 software to design and engineer the rocket parts and created the physical parts using a 3-D printer. “Lately we’ve been 3-D printing all of them,” said senior Spencer Charles, 18. “We have almost all of them printed. We’re just waiting on a couple parts.” Even though they are on track, being mindful of all the minutiae that go into successful rockets has been a challenge. “It’s kind of hard to adjust to meeting only once a week,” said 17-year-old senior Austyn Schasten. “Just because there is so much to do and so many numbers to crunch.” But even if they don’t qualify, the students do have another NASA-based trip to look forward to. From Tuesday, Jan. 29 to Sunday, Feb. 3, they will be traveling to Florida for a separate student rocket competition at Cape Canaveral. “I was told we’re going to be put in different teams with different people from all over the country,” said 18-year-old senior Makayla Payne. “So we’re going to have to know different learning styles from other people, and learn how to work with other groups who are either more knowledgeable or less knowledgeable than we are, so that should be pretty fun.” Students involved believe they have a solid shot at qualifying. “Our computer design is really helping, so we have a really good general idea,” Parks said. “And then we’ll be able to narrow it down, so we’ll be able to hit those requirements really well.” Reach reporter Ryan Pfeil at [email protected] or 541-776-4468.