Meyzeek Middle School students work with NASA to successfully launch device into space

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Four Meyzeek Middle School students sent a device to space with NASA, and it came back in one piece.

Seventh-grader Dhiraj Javvad's and eighth-graders Pratham Tippi, Agastya Mishra and Pramath Kodukulla have been working together since last school year on an ultrasonic sensor that was sent into space. After 20 mistrials and a one-on-one session with a NASA engineer, the team was able to analyze data from their device that shows how altitude affects the speed of sound.

"I would have never predicted a year ago that I would be sending things to space and actually doing scientific experiments and tests," Agastya said. "It feels really great to actually send something and get data back."

Tippi said the team received guidance from NASA on the type of code they needed to write.

"It's like a powerup, because we're able to get help from a person that has experience with all these," Pratham said. "And if we just had it blindly with no help, it would have been in a very big struggle, and we might not have gotten any results back."

The four classmates said their device performed exactly how they had hoped. They will continue to analyze the data in the coming weeks.

"We haven't completely analyzed it," Agastya said. "We still have yet to do a deep, deep dive into it. But just from looking at the surface level graphs, it seems that as altitude increases. The speed of sound does get slower just looking at our graphs. So that's what our data tells us, and that's what our initial hypothesis was, too."

Their teacher, Jacob Holtgrewe, submitted the students' experiment proposal to NASA in 2022.

To have this experience in middle school, Agastya said he hopes this is a glimpse of his future — maybe even in a job at NASA one day.

"It allows me to see where I want to be and what I want to be doing in my future," he said. "I've always had a dream of being an engineer for NASA, like aerospace. So this can kind of help me see my future."

Together, the four also learned teamwork, patience and how to work through trial and error.

Pratham said the NASA engineers helped the team work through some of their challenges to finalize their device.

"We just had to keep processing and trying, and, if we failed, we just yell at each other," Pratham said. "And we just eventually made it a good idea."

The Meyzeek students were the only team selected from Kentucky to participate in this year's NASA's TechRise Competition.

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