Yerevan’s Ayb School announced that a device designed by the school’s students will be sent into space — a project that is a direct result of the success of the school’s participation in the 2022 Kemurdzhian Youth Space Challenge, a nationwide student competition that brought together young engineers, ages 12 to 21.
A total of four teams made it to the finals at the 2022 Kemurdzhian Youth Space Challenge, including Ayb School’s Ad Astra Project-Based Learning Engineering Club. The team included 12th-grade students Andre Vardanyan, Elina Melkonyan, Hayk Piliposyan, and 11th-grader Davit Vanyan.
Engineering Club head Vazgen Gabrielyan and Ayb School alumnus Ruben Kerobyan, who is currently a robotics laboratory employee, advised the team throughout the project.
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 62 miles in open space to cross the Karman Line, a presumed boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space.
The device will stay in outer space for two to three 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.
This victory will also allow 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 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 percent of Ayb High School students get their tuition fees reimbursed.
The Project-Based Learning 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.