John Yi '03 and students create an app for NASA

Oct. 2, 2019

John Yi ’03, Teacher Prep alumnus and NJ Millburn High School science teacher, led a group of students from his space exploration course to develop a NASA award winning app.  

The group, Team Mercury, created and submitted the app  to NASA’s App Development Challenge, a pilot program that is part of the agency’s Next Generation STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Initiative. The Team Mercury app visualized stimulated test data to support NASA’s Orion Ascent Abort-2 (AA-2) flight test, an important step in demonstrating the safety of the capsule NASA is developing to carry astronauts back to the moon.

As competition winners, the students and John were invited to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center for an all-expenses-paid five day trip June 2019. During their visit to NASA’s facilities and labs, Team Mercury attended the Ascent Abort-2 flight test.  They also ran their app with actual flight test data and had the opportunity to present their app to the AA-2 engineering team and NASA leadership.

Congratulations to Team Mercury, John Yi ‘03, and Millburn High School on their achievement!