Florida Space Grant Supports Space Trek Academy

Embry‑Riddle Aeronautical University student Whitney Melick’s dream to build and launch her own projects into space got closer to reality after attending the Space Trek Academy at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

Melick receives a congratulations from Andrew Gafford, who is a research and development engineer at the Space Trek Academy. (Photo: Embry‑Riddle/Whitney Melick)The sophomore Aerospace Engineering student spent four days in August at the Center for Space Education at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Merritt Island, Florida. There, she worked with more than a dozen college students to successfully launch and retrieve a weather balloon that carried a payload up to an altitude of 100,000 feet into the upper atmosphere.

“It was an amazing experience,” said Melick, who is from Bentonville, Arkansas. “The whole idea of the academy is that it is very student-led. We did all the planning, coding and construction of the weather balloon project ourselves.”

The Space Trek Academy, sponsored by NASA Florida Space Grant Consortium, teaches students about meteorology, telemetry, payload integration and different variables that NASA must consider during missions.

Read the full article on news.erau.edu

Original Post Date: 10.3.25

Author Credit: Melanie Stawicki Azam

Image Credit: Embry‑Riddle/Whitney Melick