Students star in Mission: Space Junk

In my college engineering courses, I was constantly challenged to be innovative. Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to engage with a group of students who were learning the same lessons I did—while thinking way outside the box: into outer space.

Space exploration has an unintended result: space junk. An estimated four million pounds of space mission debris orbits our planet as fast as 17,500 miles per hour. These items—from bolts to gloves to broken satellites—create serious risks for astronauts and spacecrafts.

Students tackled this real-world problem during the 2010 Tech Challenge, a signature program of The Tech Museum in San Jose. More than 1,000 young people ages 10-18 participated.

About 250 teams designed and built solutions that could force an broken satellite to de-orbit and burn up as it enters Earth's atmosphere. Young inventors attempted to attach two Hall Thrusters (represented by batteries) to docking ports (represented by Velcro strips) on a rotating "satellite" suspended six feet above the floor. Though they all came prepared with a plan, they had only two minutes to set up and three minutes to execute.

It was a pretty tense five minutes.

As judges, we evaluated their approach to the problem, use of materials and whether or not they considered real-world issues, such as gravity. The kids knew how to impress the judges and came prepared with extensive logs on how they developed and built their solutions.

When looking at the list of winners, you'll see how talented and creative the students are (especially when you read some of the team names). Congratulations to all the teams, and a special note that this was a record-breaking year for award-winning girls.

I volunteered to judge this competition to get out and connect more. I hadn't done so before, but I plan to do it again. I enjoyed working with other Tellabs judges and invite them and others to share more about their experiences at The Tech Challenge.