In our future-driven world, the rise of the space industry remained a common theme among technological leaders. With an eye to the sky for the future, young leaders were being called upon to create new innovative ideas and solve complex problems.
With the rise of the space industry has come the rise of StellarXplorers. StellarXplorers is a STEM program that gives students the opportunity to think creatively about challenges within space today. With annual space system design challenges, Yukon saw the rise of the program from the ground up this school year.
“We’re trying to get an aerospace program in general built up here in Yukon, it’s something that’s a big industry in Oklahoma,” StellarXplorers sponsor Mica Foster said. “We had support at the highest level, but we didn’t know what we didn’t know. So we had to figure things out.”
After just one year of the competition, the team found success as they were awarded the Oklahoma StellarXplorers Rookie Award for best performance from a first-year team.
“The rookie award is awarded to the team of all the first-year teams in Oklahoma that performs the best,” Foster said. “So when we compare with all the other teams whose first year it was, we did the best out of those.”
With it being the first year of the program, there was a bit of a learning curve, but proper preparation helped to set the group up for success.

“We all worked really hard, and to the best of our abilities,” senior Ronan Feronti said. “The program has a bunch of tutorials, so we did those. Also, the program we use is called STK, or Systems Toolkit, we also got the certification for that.”
The contest included a variety of competitions for the team.
“[it included] a fun space system design competition that challenges teams of students to solve orbit planning, satellite component and launch vehicle selection scenarios in a series of online rounds,” freshman Tristen Blum said.
Going forward, the team helps to further build on this and looks to expand on the success.
“Our team by the end only had four students. One senior, one sophomore and two freshmen,” Foster said. “So hopefully they stick with it, so they’ve had experience, so when we bring some fresh enthusiasm on the team we can combine people that will be here for a few years and just get to see it get better every year.”