Student of Indian origin wins third prize in NASA's essay competition

Washington, June 7 : A high school student of Indian origin has won the third prize in NASA's 50th anniversary essay competition.

Megha Subramanian of Hershey Middle School in Hershey, Pennsylvania, won the third prize and a 1,000-dollar college scholarship in the competition.

The international competition challenged middle school and junior high students to discuss, in an essay of 500 words or less, one of two topics.

While the first topic was: how they have benefitted in their everyday lives from aerospace technologies built by NASA during the past 50 years, the second topic was: how their lives may be different 50 years in the future because of NASA technology.

More than 1,000 submissions from 37 states and 15 countries were entered into the competition.

Jackson Warley of the Renaissance Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, took the first prize.

The seventh grader will receive a 5,000-dollar college scholarship and a trip to view a space shuttle launch at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

In his essay, Jackson wrote, "The underlying spirit and principles of NASA heeds the basic human calling to explore the unknown and in doing so, gives people motivation."

Second prize and a 2,500-dollar college scholarship went to Grace Nowadly, a student at Berkeley Middle School in Williamsburg, Virginia.

According to NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale, "NASA is proud to recognize the winners of the 50th anniversary essay competition. This competition has generated excitement among the participating students as they learned about how America's space program impacts their lives in very powerful ways."

"The goal is to spark students' imagination in science, math, and engineering and I think we've achieved that goal with these exceptional students," he added.

NASA's Innovative Partnerships Program and NASA's Office of Education conducted the competition.

ANI