CARLSBAD — A local student’s journey to the Final Frontier ended with an unexpected victory in NASA’s Power to Explore Student Challenge.
Luca Pollack, 9, a third grader at Pacific Rim Elementary School and longtime space enthusiast, submitted his written entry imagining the power of radioisotopes in space exploration for the nationwide K-12 contest in October.
In April, Pollack and his parents received a phone call from NASA notifying him he had won his age division (Kindergarten to 4th grade).
For the second annual writing contest, students were asked to learn about radioisotope power systems, a type of “nuclear battery” or power source used by NASA for the past 60 years to explore the darkest reaches of the solar system (and beyond). Entrants then described a space mission utilizing these power systems in 200 words or less.
Approximately 1,600 students participated in the contest.
Pollack’s mission centered on a spacecraft using a radioisotope thermal generator to explore his favorite moon, Europa, which orbits Jupiter. But Pollack added an interesting twist: Once his spacecraft landed on the moon’s surface, the vessel then deployed a miniature submarine to explore the ocean underneath Europa’s icy surface.
The spacecraft, named “Fortitude,” utilizes a laser to drill a hole through the ice to drop the submarine “Resilience.” Both crafts were named after traits Pollack sees in himself, according to his submission.
“The goal of NASA is to find life on other worlds,” Pollack said. “I just want to help make that possible to see what life is because there is a pretty good possibility that life could have developed in the water of Jupiter’s Europa moon.”
As a winner among hundreds of students in the division, Pollack will receive a VIP tour of the NASA Glenn Research Center this summer in Cleveland.
Pollack’s winning idea for the NASA contest originated from another project he started in Pacific Rim third-grade teacher Barbara Nelson’s class. According to Nelson, students worked on a “place project,” where they give a presentation about an earthly or off-world location.
Pollack’s project was about the moons of Jupiter when he and his parents, Danielle and Scott Pollack, discovered the NASA program.
So, Luca Pollack expanded the project in Nelson’s class, drawing up spacecraft and submarine schematics for the vessels’ journey exploration of Europa.
When Pollack submitted his project to NASA, his parents cautioned him about expectations. However, Pollack’s sister, Olivia, 11, used her cosmic senses and predicted Luca would win.
And he did.
“(Luca) knocked the socks off his ‘place project,’” Nelson said. “The kids in here just watched with wide-open mouths, just amazed. He’s teaching them things I had no idea about.”
