Team from Huntley High hopes its NASA app has the right stuff
Come spring, six Huntley High School students could be telling NASA officials at the Johnson Space Center in Houston about the app they’ve built as part of the space agency’s application development challenge.
The students’ team name is Project DJANKS, using the initials of the participants: Daniel Przybylko, Jack Peterson, Allen Williams, Nolan Laird, Kerellos Abdelmalak and Sammy Salby.
The app’s primary goal is to visualize the NASA Artemis II mission and track its path. The real Artemis II mission is expected to take off in 2026 after NASA recently announced more delays to the mission.
The Artemis II mission involves four astronauts who will circle the moon and come back to Earth, while Artemis III envisions two other astronauts landing on the moon. That mission is currently scheduled for 2027, according to the Associated Press.
NASA’s app development challenge is open to middle and high school students. At Huntley High, computer science teacher Michelle Zietlow is the lead teacher for the project, and it’s the first time Huntley students have participated.
Zietlow heard about the challenge after attending a computer science teacher conference over the summer.
The students said they were good friends heading into the project who shared an affinity for the subject.
“We wanted to deepen our love” of space through a project, said Peterson, a senior.
When the group heard about the app challenge, “we knew it would give us a good topic,” said Przybylko, also a senior.
The students are in a software engineering course where the goal is to create an app and make it the best it can be, fellow senior Laird said.
Other projects students are working on include an app where their peers can send in homework questions and have a teacher or National Honor Society tutor answer them. There’s also an app that works like Google Maps but shows the best way around the school, as well as a mobile app focusing on fitness and nutrition, Zietlow said.
Zietlow said the students “have put in countless hours both inside and outside of class to make this app come together. It has also been really fun watching them grow in their teamwork and communication skills.”
The teens are also balancing their work on the NASA app with other courses, jobs, sports and extracurricular activities. The group had a standing appointment for the collaboration at 11 a.m. Sundays, when they would meet on the chat app Discord or in person at the Huntley Library. The students also have mentors who provide guidance.
With the school term winding down, the students were putting the final touches on the project, which culminated in a video submission due Dec. 11.
With that submitted, the team will have to wait and see how it went. If they advance, an interview with NASA would be next. If the team is among the top teams nationally, they would fly to the Johnson Space Center in Houston to make an in-person presentation to NASA in April.
Zietlow said she plans to offer the NASA challenge again, and hopes future students will take her up on the offer.