Seven South African high school pupils have made history as the first African team to compete in and win the International Space Settlement Design Competition, held at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Competing as Team ZA, the Western Cape learners triumphed on the country’s first-ever entry to the world’s longest-running space engineering contest for schools.
At the finals, they joined peers from the United Kingdom, Australia, Brazil, China and the United States to form a multinational team, Rockdonnell, that took gold.
The group made further history as the first team in the competition’s story to feature representatives from every inhabited continent.
Their victory marks a landmark moment for African participation in global space education, opening a pathway few local learners had ever accessed.
