North Jersey student wins NASA's national high school writing competition

RIDGEWOOD — Ridgewood High School senior Thomas Liu is the national high school division winner of its Power to Explore Challenge, NASA announced.

The national writing competition, now in its third year, was designed to teach students about the power of radioisotope power systems for space exploration. The nuclear batteries have allowed spacecrafts to more easily investigate the harshest, darkest environments in the solar system.

Liu's essay was among 1,787 submitted by students in grades K-12 from 48 states and Puerto Rico. His 250-word composition proposes using radioisotopes to explore Uranus' brightest moon, Ariel. The moon is of particular interest because scientists do not know what carved its deep canyons, estimated at 30 kilometers or 18.6 miles deep.

Because of the canyon depths, and because the moon receives only 1% of the energy that the Earth receives from the sun, solar-powered instruments are not useful for such projects, Liu explained. Radioisotope power systems compensate for the low level of sunlight and provide the heating necessary for instruments to operate in the surface's average -213 degrees Celsius (-351 degrees Fahrenheit).

Liu, along with the winners in the grade K-4 and grades 5-8 contest levels and their guardians, are invited to tour NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland this summer for a tour of its research facilities.

For more information on radioisotope power systems visit rps.nasa.gov.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Ridgewood NJ student wins NASA national high school writing contest