St Dominic's Duo Reaching for the Stars
This year two Fifth Year students from our school, Alecia Dibu and Alison Koci, have been chosen to be part of a team of students representing Ireland in the prestigious NASA/ NSS Ames Space Settlement Contest. This is an international space science competition aimed at challenging students to design an off-world space settlement capable of sustaining a population of over 10,000 people, whilst creating an Earth-like environment.
The students will attend a conference in Los Angeles in May. To help fund the travel costs for the girls and their teacher mentors, they have created a gofundme page, where you can donate: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-alison-and-alecias-nasa-space-settlement-mission?utm_campaign=p_lico+share-sheet-first-launch&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_source=customer
Our Fifth Year Biology and Chemistry students Alecia and Alison have titled their project “Danú”. Danú is a goddess from ancient Irish mythology who personifies nature, wisdom, strength and fertility. The students designed a settlement which will not only provide a sustainable and safe place for humans to live, but which will also protect Earth from the enhanced greenhouse effect.
Their conceptual design places a half-cut rotating torus protected by a temporary sunshade, proposed to control the amount of light hitting the earth. The residents of Danú will access resources through the biomining of asteroids and will be bioengineered to allow them to live a healthy life on the colony, despite the otherwise dangerous hazards of space life.
At St. Dominic’s we are very proud of the concept that our students have researched, designed and developed over this past year. Some of the innovative concepts in the project were inspired by the entries in the Science Week competition “Human?” in which Junior students from our school offered forward their ideas on what life could be like for humans living on a space colony.
Two of the winners of this competition, Lama Elghobashy and Nia Neju, also contributed to the Danú submission with detailed artistic conceptions. Their drawings helped to bring the theory in the project to life on the page!
We are delighted that Alecia and Alison are representing Ireland in this fabulous international STEM competition. They hope to use this opportunity to promote women in STEM and we hope that they will be leading the way for other students to follow in their footsteps.
The International Space Development Conference (ISDC) will take place in Los Angeles from May 23rd to May 26th, 2024. At this conference our team of students will present their ideas and engage in workshops with their peers from around the world. Previous attendees at this event have included, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and the event is attended by Space Industry leaders and NASA scientists and engineers. https://isdc.nss.org/
We have been busy fundraising to allow Alison and Alecia, and their NASA team mentors, Ms. Dockery and Ms. Healy, to attend this most prestigious competition. The school community have been so supportive of our fundraising efforts, including a Bake Sale and a staff Car Wash! We would like to thank Ms. Cameron, the Board of Management, the staff and all of the students at St. Dominic’s College. We would also like to thank the Parents Association and the community of parents, local representatives and businesses who have made donations to our project fund.
Finally, we would like to thank our commercial project sponsors – Element six, TUD Computer Science, The Community Credit union, Alpine Blinds, Lennox, Folens, Grants, FIT, The Educational Company, Leddy’s Uniforms Examcraft, Tara Art Supplies and Evans Educational.