NASA dream comes true for Germanna engineering student

When Germanna Community College student Jade Thompson was a student at H.H. Poole Middle School in Stafford County she took an aptitude test.
She had to look up "aerospace engineer," but the result seems to have been right on the mark.

Prof. Davyda Hammond and Jade Thompso

"It had to do with space, which I already loved," she says.

 Half a dozen years later, Thompson, an engineering student at Germanna, has been accepted into the NASA Community College Aerospace Scholars program. After 20 hours of pre-work in the program, the 2010 North Stafford High School graduate was selected to move on to participate in an exploration team project directed by NASA engineers at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Feb. 26-28.  
To get this far, she had to design a Mars Rover project that could make the trip to the Red Planet in less than a year, staying within a $500 million budget.
 “Smaller, cheaper, faster,” was the key, she says, because of budget constraints. 
“Jade is a diligent student with great academic potential,” says Dr. Davyda Hammond, one of her engineering professors at Germanna.  “She has taken full advantage of the opportunities to learn and develop herself in and outside of the classroom--which has served her well in terms of her grades and her exposure to ‘real-world’ engineering.  She has a very bright future, and we are very proud to have her as a student.”
 Cheri Ober, Germanna’s internship coordinator, helped Thompson hook up with NASA.
 “I’m very excited for Jade since this has been a dream for her since middle school,” Ober says.
 Thompson will graduate from Germanna in May and plans to transfer to the University of Virginia or Virginia Tech to continue her engineering studies.