Our Middle School Astronaut Challenge Team competed in the 2019 State Student Astronaut Challenge on 
February 4th - 6th at Kennedy Space Center. There were eleven middle school teams participating in this year's Challenge, from all over Florida and as far away as Atlanta, Georgia.

After months of studying and preparing as a team, they completed challenge after challenge advancing to the semi-finals and then to the finals. At an afternoon awards ceremony, the students and their teachers, Ms. Jung and Ms. Stevenson were awarded a 3rd place finish in the simulator challenge! The space flight simulation challenge is always the challenge that the teams look forward to. "Teams are required to perform the pre-flight operation, launch, orbit, and landing of the Space Shuttle Enterprise flight simulator." (This quote is from the organization's website studentastronautchallenge.com.) Five teams of this year's eleven advanced to the semi-final round where they, once again, perform the above sequence. However, the teams must also successfully manage in-flight emergencies (which suddenly come up!). Three teams of these teams advance to the finals. During this final round, more difficult emergencies are presented. The goals are (1) to perform successful missions and (2) to function as a strong, communicative team. All four of the challenges (which also include an engineering challenge, a lab proposal and presentation, and a landing challenge) require the teams to work cohesively and support each other in order to strengthen team performance. The rankings for all four challenges should be announced within the next few weeks. We are so proud of these students and the leadership of their team. Congratulations on a job well done!