Kelly Thomas, a student at North Stafford High School, holds a model of a manned module she designed and presented to NASA for consideration for future interplanetary travel. On the screens behind her are images from a presentation on the project. (Robert A. Martin/The Free Lance-Star)

BY AMY FLOWERS UMBLE

They say that you should aim for the moon, because even if you miss you’ll still be among the stars.
But for a local teen, the moon is a steppingstone. Kelly Thomas wants to have a hand in seeing that Americans are the first to land on Mars.
Today, she’s the youngest member of a team competing to land a spacecraft on the moon.
This is not some hypothetical exercise. The winning team in the Google Lunar X Prize will fund, design and build an unmanned craft— and then land it on the moon.
Competition organizers set a deadline of 2015, but expect the first team to touch down on the moon sometime in 2013.
Kelly, a senior at North Stafford High School, didn’t grow up a space geek. There were no glow-in-the-dark constellations on her ceiling or models of the solar system on her furniture.
But she has always loved math and science. And last year, while choosing a topic for her annual Commonwealth Gov ernor’s School project, Kelly decided to explore the final frontier.
“Space is the perfect way for us, not just as Americans but as humans, to go as far as we can go with technology,” she said.
Kelly researched ways to get to Mars and settled on a plan to adapt existing tech nology—spacecraft used for moon travel.
She emailed an aerospace engineer in Dahlgren to help with issues such as propul sion and orbital mechanics, the technical aspects of space travel she didn’t yet understand.
However, she quickly picked up the material. And a paper she wrote about the project has been slated for publication in a Harvard University journal.
The project also propelled Kelly into the Virginia Aerospace, Science and Technology Scholars (VASTS) program, where she took an online course in aerospace engineering and participated in a summer program at the NASA Lang ley Research Center in Hampton.
And she learned about the Google Lunar X Prize. She contacted Heriberto Rey noso, a robotics engineer who served as a mentor to students during the VASTS summer program.
Reynoso, who worked with NASA and now owns his own robotics company, was im pressed with Kelly’s presen tation during the program.
“She has this kind of stare, where you know this girl is driven, and typical high school students don’t have that stare,” Reynoso said. “She can talk about complex subjects like chitchat, and she’s only 17.”
So Kelly was invited to join Team JURBAN, a group of mainly college and graduate students and young scien tists like Reynoso.
“We’re a student team that’s trying to do the im possible: to go to the moon, which took NASA 30 years and $30 million,” Kelly said.
And the competition has sparked another interest: privatizing space.
In early November, Kelly traveled to Capitol Hill to meet congressional staffers and talk about making space exploration a private indus try.
“It was an eye-opening experience for me,” Kelly said. “I got to see how the bureaucracy plays a role in scientific decisions. It’s not the scientists who make these decisions. It’s kind of sad.”
Meanwhile, Kelly needed an annual project for gover nor’s school this year. She didn’t want to use the Google Lunar X Prize, be cause her team wouldn’t be ready to launch by the end of the school year.
So she and Reynoso have collaborated to create a new product: a pressure sensor for airplane wings, wind turbines and race cars. The sensor would keep track of air pressure, which could prevent stress cracks on airplane wings.
The pair work together online and by phone on the project—often until 3 a.m., Reynoso said.
“She has no problem with that,” he said. “She’s ambi tious. She’s driven.”
He often travels the coun try going to leadership con ferences or speaking to ele mentary, middle and high school students about robotics.
“That’s my goal: How can I create another one like Kel ly?” Reynoso said.
It’s a passion Kelly has caught. She hopes to also speak to younger students, to kindle an interest in science, math and technolo gy.
She admits it’s hard to get excited about a calculus equation, but she said the key is showing students what math can add up to.
“The math you’re doing now creates rockets; it cre ates video games,” she plans to tell elementary students.
“If you can get them excited, then they will want with all of their hearts to excel in school,” Kelly said.
It’s a model Reynoso has already used successfully. He talks to kids about Trans formers and says the robots’ destructive eyes are just basic electromagnets. Then he shows them how to do a simple experiment creating the magnets with wire, a pencil and a battery.
He tells them that as a young teen, he taught him self to build a robot with just a soldering machine and some Plexiglas.
“I went from building robots on my mom’s night stand to building robots for NASA,” Reynoso said.
And that is a trajectory students can relate to.
And a path Kelly is already traveling. She has already accomplished more as a high school student than some scientists do in their entire lives.
And Kelly does it while maintaining a heavy high school course load and ap plying to colleges. She has sent in applications to Vir ginia Tech, the University of Virginia, Massachusetts In stitute of Technology and Princeton.

Amy Flowers Umble: 540/735-1973 aumble@freelancestar.com