Seventh-graders win NASA contest

East Vancouver — Four Pacific Middle School seventh-graders won the middle school division of NASA’s 2016 Optimus Prime Spinoff Promotion and Research Challenge, which asks students to create new uses of NASA technologies. The Pacific group — Jasmine Wu, Katherine Valbuena, Aubrey Nesti and Heidi Long — re-purposed spacesuit material to create a lightweight, durable tent. In their project, the group said the tents can help out homeless here in Vancouver and Portland, as well as refugees in the Middle East and Europe. The tents can house up to four sleeping people, and can be folded up when not in use. The winners earn a trip to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., June 28-30 for workshops and an awards ceremony, and they’ll also create their own public service announcement video with guidance from NASA video producers. Their teacher and adviser for the project was Jason Warden. NASA extended the invitation to the flight center to an additional teacher if he or she can cover travel costs, so the Evergreen School District Foundation is raising funds at www.evergreenschooldistrictfoundation.com.