Kinston High aerospace student tapes congrats to astronaut Christina Koch

Kinston High junior Jazmyne Harris records a congratulatory video message to astronaut Christiana Koch during her virtual aerospace engineering class while classmate Corey Chen lends support. Submitted photo.

From her post aboard the International Space Station, record-setting astronaut Christina Koch goes to lengths to inspire students – particularly female students – to pursue careers in science and math; so when the North Carolina School of Science and Math’s virtual aerospace engineering class decided to beam up a congratulatory message to Koch, the job of class spokesperson naturally fell to a young woman who loves math and wants to be an engineer.

Kinston High School’s Jazmyne Harris.

“I think where you come from matters a lot, and we wanted to congratulate her since she did go to the School of Science and Math,” said Jazmyne, a junior who came to Kinston High from Contentnea-Savannah K-8 School.

Congratulations are in order for Koch, who grew up in Onslow County and graduated from the School of Science and Math in 1997. She will soon hold the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman and she made history in October by participating in the first all-female spacewalk. A graduate of N.C. State University, Koch joined NASA’s astronaut corps in 2013 and launched to the International Space Station last March.

“We understand you are coming up on some important spaceflight milestones and we are inspired by your accomplishments,” Jazmyne said in the class’ 33-second video message to Koch. “So I wanted to say congratulations.”

The message ended with a chorus of voices – other students in the virtual class and teacher Dr. Garrett Love – saying, “Congratulations, Christina.”

Wearing a NASA T-shirt, Jazmyne taped the message Wednesday – a day after she was given the assignment. “I was nervous,” she said. “Dr. Love wanted me to congratulate her and be the spokesperson. There are only two girls in the class and there aren’t many people in engineering who are female.”

The honors aerospace engineering class is one of a series of virtual classes with the N.C. School of Science and Math offered at Kinston High each semester based on students’ interests. The technology of the virtual classroom – real-time and face-to-face thanks to two large TV monitors set up in the school’s media center – allows communication among students as well as from student to teacher. The class is a favorite of Jazmyne’s.

“We don’t just do worksheets or equations. Dr. Love gives us projects,” she said. “We had a flight-path project where we had to choose two cities, find their elevation and decide how long we would ascend, how long we would descend and our cruising elevation. We learned a lot of terminology about actually being in aerospace engineering and the real world and what the career is actually like.”

What became the “Congratulate Christina Koch” project originated with the teacher but involved the entire class. The message, written by Love, included the names of the 10 North Carolina towns and cities where the class’ 13 students are located. During the recording, all the remote classes were shown on the screen, with Kinston High front and center.

The tape will be sent to NASA and relayed to Koch aboard the ISS. Does Jazmyne think the class will get a response from space?

“Dr. Love taught her,” she said, “so we might.”