From the earliest stories told about the constellations in the night sky to man’s first step on the moon a mere 55 years ago, humans have always been fascinated by what lies beyond our puny little planet. Nowadays, space exploration is more relevant than ever with the dawning of commercial space flight and the initiation of new projects such as sending a manned vessel to Mars. With all this excitement surrounding the future of space exploration, it only makes sense that a club to educate students on such matters would be started.
Enter the Aerospace club, recently founded by Junior Suhani Srivastava for the purpose of educating students about the profession of aerospace engineering as well as the subject of space exploration itself.
“The mission of the aerospace club is to bring students closer to aerospace and spread awareness about aerospace engineering since a lot of students don’t know that it’s a good field to get into,” Srivastava said. “Also because [space exploration] is a big part of our future now with companies like SpaceX and NASA and the whole Mars exploration, I just thought it was really cool to present that since [it’s something] I’m passionate about.”
Although the aerospace club may have only made its landing recently – the start of this school year to be exact, for Srivastava, space has always been an area of fascination.
“Back in fifth grade I went to a camp at NASA,” Srivastava said. “That got me really interested in space and planets because [although] I thought they were super pretty originally, after I started educating myself about them, I thought it was really cool how the universe works and stuff like that. Then in freshman year I decided I kind of wanted to go into the STEM field and pursue engineering, [especially when] I found out that aerospace has really close ties to space exploration.”
Because of its recent debut, the club has only hosted two meetings so far. However, despite the club’s humble beginnings, the members of the aerospace club have gotten to partake in fun activities and make lasting memories.
“We do different things,” Junior and social media manager for the club Trish Das said. “For example, [for our first meeting] we designed model rockets based on a set budget. We had materials like construction paper, tape, bottles, and etc. And so it was kind of a fun way to test our creativity. We’ve also had other opportunities, like making our own company.”
However, like any club, the aerospace club has had its fair share of trials when it comes to scheduling meetings and finding topics that would lure in more members.
“I think one of the struggles [of running a club] is organizing a good time to have a meeting because there are so many clubs at our school so it can be hard to get a lot of members to show up some of the time,” Das said. “For example, one time our meeting coincided with a meeting of the student council [which was a problem] since most of our people are a part of that. Then there’s also planning what activities we do to keep people engaged. In the future we plan on having more informational meetings to learn more about aerospace in America in general and its future. We’re also trying to see how [to get a guest speaker] but because of budget constraints that’s kind of a challenge.”
Nonetheless, the aerospace club continues to create a fun and engaging atmosphere where everyone is welcome regardless of having extensive knowledge in space or not. For more information and meeting times you can visit their Instagram account at @slhs_aerospace_club or join their Remind at @slhs-iac.
“Because [aerospace] is kind of a niche field you have to be passionate about it to get into it,” Srivastava said. [But] we’re always welcome to have more people [join] and learn more about aerospace.”
