NASA HUNCH

The NASA HUNCH Program, operated by NASA’s Johnson Space Center and Marshall Space Flight Center, gives high school students exciting opportunities for hands-on learning. Students work in teams and apply science and math to real-world tasks. They follow the engineering design process to create their own experiments or equipment to meet a challenge. Students test their experiments on parabolic flights that simulate zero gravity.

Specific HUNCH programs include Design & Prototype, Softgoods, Hardware, Video Challenge, Culinary Challenge. Selected projects from these programs have flown to the ISS. Students have built stowage lockers, designed a tool for use on a spacewalk, and contributed to the menu of foods available to astronauts onboard the ISS. CASIS supported the Extreme Science part of the HUNCH program in 2011-2014.

There are many different ways to join the HUNCH Program, such as volunteering as a mentor to a local school, becoming a HUNCH Teacher through the school district, or attending a Design Review.