SWFT
Space Sustainability Competition 2025 Results
Two Teams from PVNet SWEEP the Competition with 1st & 2nd Place!
Our students swept the competion winning first and second place in a national competition with 100 teams. This year's competition was aimed at tackling a critical issue of space development and exploration: SPACE JUNK.
Space junk or as NASA calls it, space debris, is defined as "any human-made object in orbit about the Earth that no longer serves any useful purpose." This chaotic brew of junk includes everything from discarded rocket parts and
defunct satellites to fragments caused by past explosions or collisions.
Winning Submissions
First place went to a team of four students from Ridgecrest Intermediate School in Rancho Palos Verdes:
Ezra Hahn, Harry Kang, Philip Ryu and Eugene Kim. Their invention, The HexaTrap, is a hexagonal,
double-cupped device that would use solar-powered laser tracking to capture and vaporize space junk.
Second place went to seventh-graders Jackson Schimmel and Max Rubinstein, who go to Chadwick, and
Joseph Jaconi of Manhattan Beach Middle School. Their idea: grow biodegradable nets made of mycelium - the root-like structure of fungi - in orbit. These thick, renewable nets would trap debris and then be jettisoned into Earth's atmosphere to burn up, while new ones grow in their place.
Watch the videos for more information:
Key Details:
Who Can Participated?
U.S. students in grades 7–8, supervised by an adult mentor
Judging Criteria:
Creativity, Feasibility, Technical Presentation, Business Viability, and Video Quality.
Daily Breeze Article:
Learn more on the official SWFT Competition Website here!
SWFT Sponsors:
