Eight South African high school students heading to NASA space design competition
Eight South African high school pupils have been selected to represent the country at the International Space Settlement Design Competition at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
Seven will travel to the United States in July 2026, after qualifying through South Africa’s first national space settlement design competition.
The South African event was held on the University of Cape Town’s upper campus in March 2026 and brought together 109 high schoolers.
Over two days, the students formed fictional aerospace companies, elected leadership teams, and produced full engineering proposals for a permanent lunar settlement.
Their proposals were assessed by judges, including University of Cape Town mechanical engineering professor Wei Hua Ho.
The international competition will include more than 270 competitors from countries across the world.
Teams at the final will form fictional aerospace companies of 50 to 60 pupils, compared with 20 to 30 at the UCT event.
They must structure themselves into departments and respond to a rigorous Request for Proposal modelled on real aerospace industry tenders.
The teams will then pitch their designs to judges, including NASA engineers and former astronauts.
According to Jagger Doubell, founder of the South African Space Design Competition (ZASDC) this will be the first time an African country is represented at the international finals.
“The competition has spanned five continents up to 2025. Africa was the missing one. That changes in July,” he said.
Doubell, a 19-year-old currently on a gap year, founded the South African chapter after competing internationally in 2024 and 2025.
He said he discovered the competition while studying in the United Kingdom and noticed that he was the only South African in the room.
After returning to Cape Town, he pitched the idea of a South African national chapter to the heads of the Space Science and Engineering Foundation in the UK and Aerospace Education Competitions in the U.S.
Doubell said he received their endorsement to build the local competition, but had to establish and fund the initiative himself.
South African competition built from scratch
“I wrote a mail merge tool in Google Apps Script to reach every school in the Western Cape, built the website and branding, and raised competition funding through GoFundMe,” he said.
“I also coded a socioeconomic scoring algorithm to ensure the National Finals mixed students from vastly different backgrounds into the same teams.”
Doubell said the Space Science and Engineering Foundation (SSEF) had provided in-kind support through mentorship and advice from CEO Jenny Lyons.
However, he said the SSEF and Aerospace Education Competitions organisation made it clear from the start that the South African competition would need to be built locally.
Doubell explained that to qualify for the eight-person team going to the U.S., students had to demonstrate exceptional skills in communication, teamwork, and technical design proficiency.
Teams were composed of pupils from three or four different schools, meaning they didn’t know many of their fellow competitors at the start of the competition, which was part of the challenge.
Three companies of roughly 30 students each competed at the national finals. The majority of Team South Africa came from the winning company, but not all.
“We do this because there’s no singular person that makes or breaks a 30-person company. There are deserving, capable and outstanding students all round.”
Students were selected by their “company CEOs” — volunteers from the UCT Space Society — who were briefed and trained on what qualities to look for.
Each fictional company had two CEOs, and their selections were evaluated after the event to form the final team. With Team South Africa chosen, Doubell said the training began.
“During the actual competition, students respond to a rigorous Request For Proposal modelled after real aerospace industry tenders,” Doubell explained.
“They then need to pitch to judges, including NASA engineers and former astronauts. This is the international finals, the challenge is tough.”
He said most countries’ teams have been through multiple rounds of events as they were more established organisations.
“As such, I am training Team South Africa to step up to the challenge before July.”
Photos from the first ZASDC nationals in 2026
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