Hyperspace Challenge, an accelerator program created by the Air Force Research Laboratory and CNM Ingenuity, announced Tuesday it opened a competition for New Mexico high school students to design art that helps illustrate complex, space-related scientific concepts.
Two New Mexico public schools — the New Mexico School for the Arts and the Digital Arts and Technology Academy — collaborated with Hyperspace Challenge to design the student art competition. The Space Force's Space Rapid Capabilities Office also partnered with the Challenge to establish the first-of-its-kind competition.
The competition — called "Project S.O.S - Safeguard Our Satellites!" — is open to high school students throughout the state. Submissions are due in digital format March 23; more information on the competition and how to submit artwork can be found on Hyperspace Challenge's website.
Alongside the contest, the New Mexico School for the Arts and the Digital Arts and Technology Academy will also host a range of aerospace industry experts to talk with students about the value of applying creative and artistic concepts to space, according to a news release. Experts include folks from the Space Force Space Rapid Capabilities Office, the Tracy Seeley Center for Teaching Excellence and NASA.
Hyperspace Challenge, which is focused on bringing together various aerospace groups from across academia, private industry and government to drive aerospace innovation, has used art made by Madeleine Ingram, a recent graduate of the New Mexico School for the Arts, to help promote its programming, Kelly Stafford, the Challenge's senior program manager, said.
Collaborating with Ingram previously helped spark the idea for the broader student art competition, Stafford added.
One of the particular focuses of the competition is space debris and congested Earth orbits. The project wants to help raise awareness of that particular issue through student art.
"We are eager to see what students develop over the course of the competition because we believe art is one of the most exciting ways to engage new communities and to make concepts around these problems accessible to the public," Stafford said in a statement.
Jaguar Precision Machine Corp., an Albuquerque-based prototype production machine shop, is the competition's corporate sponsor. A handful of selected winners will receive small cash awards through the competition.
Winners of the competition will be selected through categories that include "most creative" and "most informative," according to the release. Those winners will also be honored at an event later this year.
An important part of the competition, too, will be engaging and inspiring public school students in New Mexico. That goes both ways, Stafford said — educating students on the aerospace sector through expert presentations, and letting students educate the public more broadly through non-traditional applications of artwork.
"The reason why we want to use artwork is because we definitely believe that it takes everyone. We see it as a way to explain things in a more visceral kind of way, where we can express the urgency and the need for what we're doing," Stafford said.
