Woodland High School students selected to help develop mission to Mars

WOODLAND — Two juniors from Woodland High School were selected by Seattle’s Museum of Flight to attend the summer phase of its Western Aerospace Scholars program. Casey Logan and Bella Mattison will attend the program with other student teams from across the Pacific Northwest to cooperate and plan a mission to Mars with other professional engineers, scientists and educators from Boeing, NASA and elsewhere. Pandemic permitting, four teams will travel to Seattle where they tour the Boeing factory floor and visit the particle accelerator at University of Washington. The teams develop a mission to Mars by selecting from NASA equipment to design vehicles, rovers, habitats and solve other real-life problems that may be encountered by astronauts. Logan became interested in science at a young age. “My dad worked at the Jet Propulsion Lab for NASA in California and encouraged me to take science and math classes throughout school,” Logan said. “During my freshman year, I took Elizabeth Talvitie’s astronomy course and it is still my favorite class.”