Fiesta Bowl

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Aerospace Challenge History

The Honeywell Fiesta Bowl Aerospace Challenge Presented by The Arizona Republic featuring Microsoft Mission Control was conceived in the summer of 1999 by an enterprising Fiesta Bowl Committee member and two members of the Fiesta Bowl Marketing staff.  As a volunteer Committee member, Scott Weisenburger was the liaison between NASA and the Fiesta Bowl.  Weisenburger had always encouraged the NASA astronauts to speak at schools and other venues during their visit to the Valley, and to enjoy and partake in the events of the Fiesta Bowl. During a conversation Weisenburger had with the two Fiesta Bowl staffers the idea of a math and science competition was born. On that same day, the two staff members met with the management of Honeywell to propose a partnership with this newly created event.  Honeywell joined the team shortly and with the help of some of their top engineers the program was put into motion.That same year the newly established Challenger Space Science Center joined the team as educational advisors and the host facility of the event.  The partnership of the Challenger Space Science Center has allowed the program to grow to more than 500 participants each year.  The relationships forged by the Challenger Space Science Center and Arizona schools have solidified our tremendous level of school participation.

Following the program’s success and educational notoriety, the event preliminaries were moved in 2004 to a larger facility, ASU at the West Campus, and in 2006 the preliminaries were expanded to encompass two days due to the large growth in participants.  The current format of the contest encourages fifth through eighth grade students, in teams of three to five, from across Arizona to expand their knowledge of space and science technology by developing plans for a new generation International Space Station.  Their comprehensive designs include physical scale models of the space station, as well as scientific explanations on how they can sustain a crew of 100 people for two years. The projects must detail how waste will be managed along with food and oxygen demands, and other information pertaining to life on the space station.  The competition is judged by experts from Honeywell.  They chose the top three teams from each day of the preliminaries to advance to the finals at the Challenger Space Center in Peoria, where the projects are presented to a panel of NASA astronauts and Honeywell engineers. The first place team and teacher at the finals are annually awarded with a VIP trip to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas contingent upon government approval, to experience a behind-the-scenes look at the NASA facilities.