Local News in Brief : Huntington Beach : Mesa View School Is in Shuttle Contest Finals
Mesa View School has been named a state finalist in a nationwide contest sponsored by NASA to choose the name of the space shuttle that will replace Challenger.
A group of 12 fifth- and sixth-graders entered the Name the Orbiter Contest in December.
They spent a month building a model of the shuttle--Adventure--made of plywood, papier-mache, plastic, corrugated cardboard and trash cans. It measured 63 feet long, 10 feet wide and 20 feet high, and had a tail that jutted 15 feet into the air.
Students sent pictures of the model and a paper describing their project to NASA judges.
“I was just hyper,” said Eric Wersching, 12, who worked on the project. “I just went and told everybody who I knew.”
The winning students get a free trip to a NASA-related event, possibly to Cape Canaveral, Fla.
Mesa View’s project was selected over several hundred projects from around the state. The national winner will be named in May.
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