12 NJ Students Help Team Win International Space Design Competition

TOMS RIVER, NJ — For years space exploration has talked about missions to Mars and what people would need to live there. But what if the mission was to create a settlement orbiting Venus?

That was the challenge posed this summer to more than 250 students — including 12 from New Jersey — from the United States and multiple countries during the International Space Settlement Design Competition held at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The students, divided into four teams of about 64 members, had 48 hours to come up with a proposal for how they would create a settlement capable of sustaining human life in orbit around Venus.

The team that included the New Jersey students — Team Vulture — won the competition, which tests their engineering skills along with their abilities to work in groups in very realistic ways, said Christine Girtain, the director of authentic science research at Toms River High Schools North and South and the 2023 New Jersey State Teacher of the Year.

The teams of students had to treat their groups as if they were a company bidding on a project and working on the pieces of the bid through smaller teams within the groups that were the "divisions" of the company similar to the functioning of Northrop Grumman or Blue Origin.

"It was very real world, engineering-wise," Girtain said Thursday. In addition to working with students from other countries, they had to navigate the differing dynamics of the team, down to when they chose to eat and sleep.

"There were kids doing shifts," with kids who liked working late staying up through the night while those who needed sleep, too, Girtain said, and they had to understand that some of their teammates needed sleep to function at their sharpest levels.

Girtain said Vulture's design, created by students from Iowa, Texas, Argentina, Australia, China, Portugal, and Spain along with New Jersey, won because the students had built in redundancies — features that provided back-up levels of safety if systems failed.

Their winning proposal included:

• Advanced habitation modules with innovative radiation shielding
• Artificial gravity systems for improved human health in microgravity
• Sustainable life-support ecosystems integrating hydroponics and water recycling
• Automated construction technologies using robotic systems to assemble large structures in orbit

With Venus there are challenges such as sulfuric acid rain and volcanic activity, Girtain said, factors that the students had to keep in mind as they developed their proposal, along with resources on the planet that can be utilized.

"You have to orbit it," she said. "You can't live there."

Girtain said she believes the organizers chose Venus for the project to challenge the students with a planet less habitable than the moon or Mars, which have been the typical choices for projects.

"This competition pushes students to think like aerospace engineers and collaborate across cultures and languages," said Marybeth Kretz, the director of authentic science research at Toms River High School East, who was the New Jersey team's other chaperone. "It’s a real-world test of innovation, leadership, and teamwork — and our New Jersey students rose to the challenge brilliantly."

To reach the competition at the Kennedy Space Center, the New Jersey students competed at the East Coast Space Design competition that was held in March at Toms River High School North. Girtain said it was the first time the competition was held, and there were about 25 students from a handful of schools.

That event, which was sponsored by the Jersey Shore STEM Ecosystem, the NJ STEM Pathways Network, the Central Ocean Rotary Club, and the Brick Rotary Club, was a one-day event that lasted about 14 hours, Girtain said. It had fewer requirements because of the shorter time frame, and focused on designing a Mars rover for long-term surface exploration on the planet, for potential settlements.

The students worked with engineers from NASA, Boeing, and the Lakehurst Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division, who also helped judge the competition along with the president of the NJ Academy of Science, a structural engineer representing the NJ Society of Professional Engineers; an architect, a retired IT professional and 2023 Arizona Teacher of the Year and 2024 National Air and Space Forces Association/Rolls-Royce Teacher of the Year Ty White, whom Girtain got to know while she was on sabbatical in 2023-24 as the New Jersey Teacher of the Year.

White helped her create the East Coast Space Design competition, she said.

The students selected to go to the international competition were Victoria Cutillo, Madison Orlando, Cormac Butler, and Logan Lonergan from Toms River East; Josh Girtain and Maggie Elsherif from Toms River North; Cameron Brennan, a 2025 graduate of Toms River South and current South student Zach Wistreich; Helen Nil Yilmaz and 2025 graduate Finley Torrens from Holmdel High School; Luke Quartey of Neptune High School, and Richa Baheti of Old Bridge High School.

The students' stay in Titusville, which spanned five days, was paid for by the competition; all they had to do was get there. Girtain said some parents chose to drive their kids to the event while others flew with them. About eight students traveled with Kretz and Girtain, who said she made sure students who needed help had plane fare, thanks to grant funding she had received.

In Titusville, the group met Caitlin Lopez, a 2014 Toms River South graduate who now works for Blue Origin, and she joined them for dinner to talk with the students and answer questions.

They flew down on a Friday and returned on a Tuesday, with the event rounded out with guest speakers and other events, Girtain said.

The students praised the experience.

"Trying and understanding a new branch of science totally changed the way I view the subject," said Wistreich from Toms River South. "This competition brought me so many great opportunities and chances to collaborate and compete among people from all over the world and learn from them as well."

“Working with and talking to people from all over the world was an experience I found very gratifying, even though we were all from different backgrounds we worked together to accomplish something innovative," said Josh Girtain.

"This competition has not only given me a chance to interact with people of other cultures, but a chance to experience the realities of collaboration and communication that come with working in a company," Madison Orlando said. "I hope more teenagers will get a chance to experience a competition like this."

"This experience not only challenged us to the fullest, but also gave us an opportunity to work with a global team," Helen Yilmaz of Holmdel said. "It was more than just a competition, an environment that pushed talented students to think beyond boundaries and inspire them to reach the unknown."