The Washington Aerospace Scholars program accepted Nathanial Prakasam from International Community High School and Riley Hiliker from Juanita High School to participate in one of the four WAS Summer Residency sessions held in June and July at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.

Washington Aerospace Scholars (WAS) is a competitive educational program for high school juniors from across Washington state.

These scholars are among the 160 students who qualified for the Washington Aerospace Scholars Summer Residency program from 297 students who applied in November.

To qualify for the residency program, they spent five months studying a NASA-designed, distance-learning curriculum via the Internet and have been selected to attend one of the four residencies hosted at The Museum of Flight in Seattle this summer based on their academic performance on the distance-learning lessons.

During the residency experience, they will collaborate with the other student participants on the design of a human mission to Mars. WAS scholars are guided by professional engineers, scientists, university students and certified educators as they plan these missions.

The WAS program is designed to inspire students to pursue degrees and careers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) but the students are divided into teams that also require them to learn about mission management, budgets, the legal aspects of space exploration, and medicine.

In addition to the design of the human mission to Mars, they and the other WAS scholars will also participate in a number of hands-on engineering challenges.

Summer residency participants will also receive briefings from experts in the fields of engineering, science, physics, medicine, project management, risk management, and space exploration, such as Dr. Bonnie J. Dunbar, NAE, retired NASA astronaut.

They will also visit Everett for a behind-the-scenes tour of the Boeing Commercial Airplane assembly plant, (including the new 787), tour Aerojet’s Redmond facilities, and the engineering laboratories at the University of Washington. As a graduate of WAS, these students will join over 860 program alumni, representing 180 different Washington high schools.

Washington Aerospace Scholars will be accepting applications for students and teachers in early September for the 2012-2013 program cycle; visit www.museumofflight.org/was to download an application. WAS participants must be high school juniors, United States citizens and Washington state residents.