Colorado students meet with NASA mentors in HUNCH program review

The future of aerospace engineering is right here in Colorado. The Jefferson County School District is one of only three school districts in the United States to be named a "Center of Excellence" as part of NASA's HUNCH Program.

HUNCH, or High Schools United with NASA to Create Hardware, is a hands-on, project-based program pairing K-12 students with NASA engineers and scientists. The students receive mentorship from experts and design and fabricate projects for the International Space Station and the Artemis missions.

"We take ideas that come from our astronauts, whether they called out from orbit or come by and see us after they return. We take those ideas and we ask our students to come back with solutions to those problems," said Blake Ratcliff, HUNCH program manager.

On Friday, the students went through a review. It's one of their few chances to meet with their NASA mentors, show their projects, and get feedback to fine-tune them. The goal is to show off their work at the ISS.

"We've sent several things to the ISS for testing over the years," said Matthew Brown, an engineering instructor at Warren Tech. "Which looks really cool on a college application, if you've already worked with NASA and built things for the International Space Station."

Last year, more than 30 projects were selected to compete at the national level at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.