The atmosphere at Bothell High School has been full of excitement as BHS’s very own SWENext club prepares to launch their project into the sky.
SWENext is a STEM club geared towards women run by Saanvi Subramanian (‘25). Back in October, Saanvi Shah (‘27) brought to attention the NASA TechRise challenge. This challenge involved designing an experimental proposal that was to be launched into a suborbital test flight into the stratosphere at the end of the challenge.
We found out about the challenge “one week before the deadline,” Subramanian (‘25) said, so it was a race against time. I can testify with my own experiences as I was in charge of making the blueprint for the physical design, where I had to research and find the microcontrollers, sensors, and pumps in an extremely short timeframe. For the whole team, the time constraints pushed us to our limits. According to Saanvi Subramanian (‘25), “Kaustubh and I came up with the idea for a buffer experiment after many failed suggestions.” In detail, the experiment investigated how atmospheric conditions in the stratosphere—specifically temperature and pressure—affect the properties of a blood-like buffer solution in order to understand how these vital buffer systems might behave in extreme environments like those encountered during space exploration.
Naturally, we were all surprised that we had won the challenge, considering how last-minute the preparations had been. According to Kaustubh Grama (‘25), “It was very exciting, I thought these competitions were a long shot, winning made me realize that it was still attainable- reach for the moon and you’ll land on the stars.” Yana Ivanov (‘25) said that the team learned “how to work with others in areas that we were unfamiliar with, it was a learning and bonding experience, people with different areas of interest can come together to create something magical” According to Maggie Brown, it was, “A great opportunity to expand our knowledge in aerial technology and making friends in a community of women in stem”.
We’re scheduled for takeoff in August, so stay tuned!
If you’d like to follow SWENext, join the Schoology: W25C-FSVW-JP7KF and follow us on Instagram @bothell.swenext.
