The device designed by Ayb School students will be sent into space. This became possible thanks to the victory of the school’s Ad Astra Project-Based Learning Engineering Club in the Kemurdzhian Youth Space Challenge 2022, a nationwide student competition that brought together young engineers aged 12-21.
In all, 4 teams made it to the finals. Ayb School’s Ad Astra team includes 12th-grade students Andre Vardanyan, Elina Melkonyan, Hayk Piliposyan, and 11th-grader Davit Vanyan. The mentors are Engineering Club head Vazgen Gabrielyan and Ayb School alumnus Ruben Kerobyan who is currently a robotics laboratory employee.
The launch is scheduled for this June from an international booster site. The device with a 197gm payload will be placed on a suborbital rocket and sent to the height of over 100km in open space to cross the Karman Line, a presumed boundary between Earth's atmosphere and outer space.
The device will stay in space for 2-3 minutes. It will collect data on the rocket’s flight path, temperature, pressure change, speed, acceleration, and the intensity of ultraviolet radiation and ozone concentration. Afterward, it will get back to earth along with the rocket.
The victory will also enable the Ad Astra team to participate in the 6th STARMUS, one of the world-scale science and art festivals that will take place in September 2022 in Yerevan, Armenia.
Kemurdzhian Youth Space Challenge 2022 is a joint initiative of Bazoomq Space Research Lab and HyeTech community.
Ayb High School is the first non-governmental social project. In order to provide equal opportunities to all students irrespective of family’s financial standing, a special scholarship system has been developed. Presently, over 75% of Ayb High School students get their tuition fees reimbursed.
The Project-Based Learning (PBL) is one of the distinguishing features of the Araratian Baccalaureate syllabus. It is an innovative educational model, which stems from “learning by doing” principle adopted by Ayb School in 2015. The PBL builds the learning process around projects.
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