DOD Seeks to Inspire Youth in Hypersonics Career Field

The Defense Department is sponsoring a Hypersonics Horizon High Speed Video challenge, open to high school and undergraduate students, with cash prizes.

"The Hypersonics Horizons High Speed Video Challenge is integral to building an enduring advantage by investing in the workforce of tomorrow," said Aprille Ericsson, Ph.D., the assistant secretary of defense for science and technology. "The Joint Hypersonics Transition Office continues to cultivate and invest in future talent by utilizing our Smart Scholarship program and partnering with Academia which develops pathways for both a diverse and technically proficient workforce to protect both our national security and American prosperity for years to come."

"The challenge is designed to inspire the next generation workforce in hypersonics," said Mark A. Glenn, director of the Joint Hypersonics Transition Office.

Glenn said instructions for high school teams, of up to three students, involve making a three-to-five-minute video explaining the type of challenges a spacecraft might encounter on Mercury, Venus, Titan (Saturn's moon), Ceres (asteroid) or Pluto. They would also have to address how the spacecraft design would be impacted by challenges of their chosen celestial body's environment and would need to explain how they would overcome those issues.

For post-secondary student teams, Glenn said students are required to make a three-to-five-minute video discussing a design for a plane-like spacecraft engineered to launch, reach hypersonic speeds and safely touch down on Mars. Then they must address challenges the spacecraft and astronauts may face upon landing. He added that the problem sets involve multidisciplinary challenges and solutions so students can pull from diverse subject matter, not just physics and engineering.

Lori Michelle Stiglitz, JHTO workforce development lead, said this is the second year for a challenge involving hypersonics.

Last year's challenge involved ways to transport people at hypersonic speeds. Many college and high school students applied and the students as well as their science and engineering teachers were enthusiastic about it. The students conducted research, delving into many open-source documents on the topic and related topics, she said.

One of last year's university student who participated in the challenge, looks to pivot to hypersonics in grad school, Stiglitz added.

Last year's high school winner knew nothing about hypersonics "so he took a deep dive into hypersonics and he's sharing his knowledge with all of the students, teachers and administrators at his high school. Some of the physics teachers didn't even know about the topic. So that knowledge is spreading," she said.

"Kids are very creative and enthusiastic about hypersonics. We get to gather their unique mindsets in hypersonics problems," she said.

Awards will most likely be announced in February after evaluators who work across the DOD hypersonics community provide their feedback and assessment. They might also gain novel insights by this challenge, she added.

About a month ago, Stiglitz said she spoke to about 300 mechanical engineers at Montana State University and shared the upcoming challenge with them and they all started chatting eagerly about it.

For more details about the challenge, visit the challenge entry web page here.