Aaliyah Anaha (Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa), a year 12 student at New Plymouth Girls’ High School, is excited to have been chosen as one of the rangatahi from 28 different nations to attend the prestigious space school, where she will be able to interact with the top aerospace professionals worldwide.
She heads off to Houston, Texas, this weekend.
The 16-year-old is thrilled by the opportunity and says her favourite subjects at school played a big part in securing it.
“I just always had a love for maths and science, and I thought that space school was a good opportunity to showcase that. Because really, I don’t know what I want to do as a career, and then this could be an opportunity to explore it.”
The United Space School is an annual two-week international programme for high school students from 28 countries focusing on space exploration and international cooperation. Aaliyah’s science teacher, Julia Stephen, is excited for the opportunity.
“I think being able to kind of get out of, not a bubble, but sometimes it can be a little bit isolating, sometimes in Aotearoa. So being able to go and work with students who are from all over the world and then being exposed to scientists who work at Boeing, SpaceX, NASA and just the amazing potential of where science and maths can take her,” she said
Aaliyah says she doubted herself and didn’t believe she would meet the requirements. However, despite the intense application process, she was able to juggle her life
“So there was five assignments because there’s five different teams because for the whole thing you’re planning a mission to Mars and each team has like a certain role, one of my favourite was the red team because that was about finding your journey to and from Mars and using maths and all that and I like using maths, so that was really fun and it was long though.
“Every week we got an assignment, so over five weeks, and that was pretty hard fitting that in on top of my schoolwork, but I did get it done and it was fun.”
