Wyoming High School Students Are Building A Moon Lander

Not all kids stare at their phones all day. Some are reaching out. WAY OUT!

At Newcastle High School students and three of their science teachers are working on a small satellite that will actually be sent to THE MOON!

The Global Lunar Expedition for Everyone (GLEE), exposes young people to future space exploration and research.

Their hope is to inspire kids into these professions.

Newcastle High School is the only Wyoming school participating in the program, so far.

They are working on what is called a 'LunaSat' satellite the size and depth of a credit card.

That sounds small. But it will land with 500 other satellites just like it, spread out across the surface.

Below is a rendering of what these cards will look like once they are spread out across the moon.

GLEE has an entire Youtube page dedicated to the project.

The page only has 45 subscribers so far, but the project is just getting started.

The hope is that the project will go international.

You can watch a video on this project, below.

"This is something that Dr. Andrew Young of the Wyoming NASA Space Grant Consortium has been working with us on for three years or so," said Jim Stith, one of the NHS science teachers involved in the project.

"It's been delayed due to COVID and he's kind of brought this to us as a 'Hey, you could get your kids interested in working on something that actually goes to the moon.'

So we applied and heard nothing for a number of years, and finally, they said 'Hey, apply for the in-person workshop.' We learned how to use the LunaSats and we brought back the first prototype of that." (Wyoming Public Media).

The satellites will be launched sometime in 2023.

"We could be looking at research on a proposed lunar colony site in the future or landing site. We're just there to collect data through this dispersed science network," Stith said. (Wyoming Public Media).