SCVi Charter School hosted its inaugural “Hack Into Space” competition Friday, with a featured keynote speaker from NASA’s Ames Research Center.

During the event, SCVi students ranging from sixth graders to high school seniors gathered in small groups and competed to develop strategies that deal with the challenges of colonizing the moon and Mars, said Kathleen Fredette, Director of STREAM Initiatives at iLEAD Schools.

“The ability for us to use space as a means to engage students to think about science and technology and to motivate them to follow their dreams, is a critical tool,” said keynote speaker Dr. Jacob Cohen, Chief Scientist at NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley California.

As a part of iLEAD’s Student Aerospace Projects, the competition supports the development of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Design and Math) across all the disciplines, officials said.

The initiative is a result of a partnership with Out Of The Box, an Israeli educational enterprise and is sponsored by the Israeli Ministry of Science, which underscores the need for innovation and international collaboration among STEAM educators and learners, according to officials.

“In the last year, I was working with people that I already know, but for the science accelerator project I got to go meet Israeli kids and I got to work with them and develop new ideas with them,” said Connor Raskin, an 11th grade SCVi student.

Due to the collaboration, SCVi families are hosting a delegation of eight Israeli students who are visiting the United States in association with the iLEAD project, officials said.

The American and Israeli high school students who worked together during the semester-long international program shared their ideas with scientists at NASA Ames Research Center in San Jose, California, Wednesday, May 23.

Those same students also presented their innovations at the event Friday.

“Getting students to all work together shows that there’s diversity with an equal passion for space.” Cohen said.

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