NASA Dream with Us: Design the Aircraft, Explain the Engineering

NASA Dream with Us: Design the Aircraft, Explain the Engineering

Editorial overview

Changing an aircraft’s fuel sounds, at first, like an engine problem. It quickly becomes a question about where the fuel goes, what it weighs, how much useful cargo remains and whether the aircraft can still do its job. NASA’s Dream with Us High School Engineering Challenge connects aircraft design with questions arising in aviation research. NASA describes its aviation work with FAA, university and industry partners as addressing safety, affordability and new fuels. That context matters: the interesting task here is not to sketch an impressive future aeroplane, but to make a defensible set of engineering choices.

The current task asks teams to design a cargo aircraft using liquefied natural gas and explain why a freight operator should select it. CompeteMap sees the strongest fit in students who enjoy following one design decision into several related problems. A storage choice can affect the airframe; an airframe choice can affect the mission. The educational value lies in tracing those connections and being willing to revise a favourite idea. Families should expect a substantial modelling and explanation project, rather than a quick construction activity. Students who mainly want a spectacular finished object may find the reasoning and documentation less immediately satisfying, but that is also where this opportunity becomes more useful than a model-making exercise.

Quick Facts

Review Evaluation

For current dates, eligibility and registration details, see the NASA Dream with Us High School Engineering Challenge competition page.

Review Evaluation

Rated Advanced. The central challenge is connecting a feasible aircraft concept to mission requirements, explaining fuel-related design choices and defending trade-offs clearly rather than producing an attractive model alone.

Follow the fuel through the whole aircraft

Begin with a question rather than a silhouette: what changes when the fuel is different? A useful working sheet might separate storage, mass, available space, loading and operation. The purpose is not to solve everything immediately. It is to discover which assumptions depend on one another before the team spends time polishing a shape.

For example, a team might favour a particular arrangement because it appears to leave more room for cargo. The next discussion should ask what the arrangement does to balance, access and the rest of the structure. These are preparation prompts, not a substitute for the official technical specification. Students should work from that specification and distinguish calculations from guesses.

A good habit is to keep an assumption log beside the design. Record the quantity used, the source, the reason it seems appropriate and what would happen if it changed. An uncertain input is not automatically a weakness; an uncertain input disguised as a measured fact is. This habit also makes it easier for teammates to challenge one another’s work without turning the conversation into a disagreement about personal taste.

The aircraft should be the consequence of the reasoning, not a picture that the reasoning has been written to defend.

Use the model as a test of the argument

NASA requires Vehicle Sketch Pad for the high school challenge and provides OpenVSP Ground School as a learning resource.

It is worth learning the modelling workflow with a small, deliberately uncomplicated exercise before trying to represent the full proposal. Students should be able to explain what they changed and why. A complicated model that only one teammate understands can become a bottleneck, especially when the rest of the group needs to compare alternatives.

Keep earlier versions long enough to make meaningful comparisons. If a change improves one feature but creates a problem elsewhere, write that down. The discarded version may be useful evidence of an actual decision process. It can help the team explain why the chosen design was reasonable rather than merely claim that it was optimal.

Parents need not become aircraft designers to support this work. They can ask students to explain a drawing in ordinary language, check whether a cited source really supports an assumption, or help organise files. Those interventions leave the intellectual work with the students. Redrawing the aircraft or rewriting its technical explanation would remove precisely the learning that makes the project worthwhile.

Make the notebook readable by someone outside the team

Submit an Engineering Design Notebook as a PDF no larger than 10 MB; use NASA’s notebook template and rubric, include the required permission documents, and make the notebook accessible.

Treat the notebook as the place where the work happens, not a report assembled after the interesting part is over. A short entry explaining a rejected choice is easier to write while the reasons are still fresh. Waiting until the end can produce a tidy story that no longer reflects how the design developed.

Each important diagram should answer a question. A view of the aircraft can show overall arrangement; a more focused view can explain a storage decision. Repeating similar images does not necessarily add evidence. Captions should make the purpose clear, while accessible descriptions should communicate information that a reader cannot obtain from the surrounding prose alone.

An outside reader should be able to follow a chain from requirement to design choice to supporting evidence. Where the evidence remains limited, say so. For practice, ask a teammate who did not write a section to identify its central claim and the evidence for it. If they cannot, the problem may be the structure of the explanation rather than their attention.

NASA separates technical notebook review from live presentation judging.

That distinction is a useful preparation cue. The written document must stand on its own, while an oral explanation needs a clear route through the most important decisions. Reading a dense document aloud is unlikely to be the best rehearsal. Try explaining one choice, the alternative considered and the evidence that settled the matter.

Check the team commitment before committing the team

The high school challenge is for students in grades 9–12 attending US public, private, parochial or home schools, plus children of US military members stationed overseas.

Teams have three to seven students and an adult coach; a student may join only one team, while a coach may support multiple teams.

Divide responsibilities, but avoid dividing understanding. A modeller, researcher and writer can contribute different strengths, yet everyone should understand the central proposal. Short cross-check conversations are useful: ask the modeller to explain a research assumption, and the writer to explain a geometry decision. Confusion discovered here is much easier to fix than confusion discovered while preparing the completed explanation.

Before beginning, agree on where files live, how changes are named and how the group will handle a disagreement. It is sensible to set internal review points around meaningful decisions rather than count on a last burst of effort. Leave room to test the exported document on another device and inspect figures at normal reading size.

NASA prohibits SI tools for challenge-related work, including generating or processing content, code assistance and generated imagery; all submitted work must be created solely by team members.

Read that policy before choosing tools or arranging the workflow. Do not assume that a convenience feature is acceptable simply because it is built into familiar software. The coach should help the team understand the official policy and seek clarification from the organiser where necessary.

Key Takeaways

CompeteMap would choose this challenge for students who are curious about the consequences of engineering decisions, not simply enthusiastic about aircraft imagery. The combination of a technical concept and a readable explanation can make it a rich project, provided the group is willing to expose assumptions and revise its work.

Start with the mission, learn enough modelling to compare ideas, and keep the notebook close to the actual decision process. A modest concept explained honestly is a more useful learning outcome than an elaborate concept whose crucial assumptions nobody can defend. Check the linked competition page and official materials for the live schedule and complete requirements before beginning.

Sources checked

Checked on 29 October 2026.

• https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/armd/dream-with-us-high-school-design-challenge/
• https://www.nasa.gov/aeronautics/aeronautics-stem/2026-2027-dwu-high-school-engineering-challenge/
• https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/dwu-info-session-oct2026-web.pdf
• https://www.nasa.gov/dream-with-us/