SLINGER, Wisconsin USA — With spring deadlines looming, four Washington County teens are working weekends to build a high-powered rocket to launch in front of NASA space shuttle engineers.

Their challenge: Design and build a reusable rocket capable of carrying a science payload to one mile above the surface and returning safely to the ground.

The team, all members of the county's 4-H rocketry club, is one of only 18 groups in the United States invited to display their skills this year as part of NASA's Student Launch Initiative. Their rocket will be launched in late April at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

"It cannot be wrecked," said Katlin Wagner, 15, a freshman at Slinger High School and the defending rocketry champ among 4-H youth in the county. "We must be able to put it back together and use it again."

To do that, Wagner and her teammates are crafting a multisection fiberglass rocket body.

After the rocket reaches its maximum altitude, the sections will separate to deploy parachutes, but they will remain tethered together by a long Kevlar strap, said Ben Pedrick, 14, also a freshman at Slinger High School. The sections can be put together again after each flight.

On Saturday, team members were starting over on the booster section that will house the motor.

Their first attempt at gluing fins to this lower piece of the rocket body failed because the fins were not properly aligned, said Patrick Wagner, Katlin's father and one of the adult leaders of the 4-H rocketry club. The assembly work is being done in the Wagners' basement in Slinger.

Cameron Schulz, 15, hunched over a workbench as he attached wires to a pair of altimeters. The other end of the wires will lead to two separate gunpowder charges.

At the peak of the rocket's flight, around 5,300 feet or so, one charge will explode, separating the booster section from one of two payload sections and releasing a small parachute. This will begin slowing the rocket's descent. When it falls to about 800 feet, the altimeter will trigger the second explosion, separating the two payload sections and releasing the large parachute.

Schulz could not complete his altimeter assembly Saturday, however. He had to leave for another obligation: helping milk cows on a grandfather's nearby dairy farm.

"I do not want to milk cows today," said Schulz, a sophomore at Kettle Moraine Lutheran High School in the Town of Jackson. He is more interested in a future career in mechanical engineering.

That is NASA's goal: to inspire young people participating in the Student Launch Initiative to seek careers in engineering, math, science and technology, said Tammy Rowan, assistant manager of the Marshall Center's academic affairs office.

Teammate Brady Troeller is 13 and in the eighth grade at Peace Lutheran Grade School in Hartford. He, too, is planning to attend an engineering school.

Pedrick has no doubt he will be an engineer.

Katlin Wagner has two thoughts: "Possibly an aerospace engineer. Or a surgeon."

The Washington County team is pushing itself to complete the rocket in time for a scheduled March 8 test flight near Princeton, Ill.

The team's high-powered rocket will use the same solid fuel as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's space shuttle rocket boosters. It will push their 7-foot-long rocket aloft at speeds of up to 550 mph.

The rocket engine will burn fuel for only five seconds, and then the rocket will coast upward another 15 seconds to reach its one-mile-high target altitude.

This rocket will not come with a pointed nose cone. A set of fan blades and a generator will be at the tip. As the rocket rushes upward, the force of the air will spin the blades, generating electricity. The group will measure the amount of electricity generated in the short-duration flight as part of the science experiment required for the flight.

Placed 15th among 100
The team was invited to submit a proposal for the NASA initiative after placing 15th among 100 U.S. teams in the Team America Rocketry Challenge in Virginia in May.

In that competition, teams had to launch a rocket carrying an egg to an altitude of 850 feet, and the rocket had to stay aloft for 45 seconds. The egg had to return to the ground uncracked.

A rocket club from Madison West High School in Madison also was selected this year. NASA awarded a $2,500 grant to each team to help pay for rocket parts.

The two Wisconsin groups will match their rockets against those built by teams from 10 other states: Illinois, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nebraska, Texas and Alabama.

Copyright © 2008, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.