Students’ names fly in space aboard Artemis II mission.

Three high school graduates from Alabama have a unique connection to the Artemis II mission as their names have been sent to space through a project they completed for NASA three years ago. Jacob Lee, Ben Capps, and Weston Ellison signed lockers at the Space Center in Houston in 2023 which might have seemed like a casual event, but it came to mean much more during the recent launch of Artemis II.

The trio had developed a solar panel cleaner for their senior design project, under the High Schools United with NASA to Create Hardware program. Ellison explained their approach to creating the cleaner, “We used something other than a brush so that it wouldn’t scratch or mess up the solar panel. We found out a lot of the material that was on Mars or in space was going to be magnetic.” As a permanent memento of their achievement, they signed their names to a locker now orbiting in space.

Ben Capps reminisced about their expectations from that time, “Me and Jay were joking about this the other day. We thought it was going to be on some satellite on some unmanned mission they send out there.” He expressed gratitude for the opportunities that arose from the project, highlighting the stark contrast between the excitement of having their names in space and the need to cram for an upcoming exam.

Looking towards the future, Capps envisions regaling his grandchildren with tales of space adventures, saying, “Just be joking around, saying, ‘I was an astronaut, you know me.’” For Jacob Lee, the rewarding feeling of contributing to the project after putting in substantial effort is what makes it all worthwhile. Both Ben and Jacob are juniors at Auburn University, pursuing degrees in mechanical engineering, while Weston is a business major at the University of Alabama. Their small act of signing a locker three years ago has now symbolically linked them to the broader world of space exploration on a profound level.