Brittany Kowalski hates to miss a day of school, but she won’t attend the first week of class of her senior year. She’ll be immersed in a unique NASA summer program instead.

This week, 40 teenagers from across the country will engage in a pilot project designed for females with a passion for scientific exploration and discovery.

Kowalski, who attends Vista Ridge High School, earned a spot at the week-long workshop called WISH: Women in STEM High School Aerospace Scholars at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. The students will work in teams to design a human mission to Mars mimicking real life scenarios.

Kowalski is looking forward to working alongside NASA’s women scientists, as well as other science-oriented high school girls.

“As a 17-year-old girl, my friends really aren’t into engineering,” she said. “So, it’s going to be really different seeing a group of 40 girls who all have the passion for the same thing.”

Kowalski realized she had a passion for science and technology as a 10-year-old in computer class. Building cars out of mouse traps in middle school opened her world to a sense of accomplishment that comes from creating.

“I fell in love right away with being able to build something from scratch,” she said.

Kowalski applied to WISH in February thanks to a counselor’s suggestion. She was selected out of about 200 high school girls to be one of 70 participants in an online class this past spring.

Kowalski did up to two hours of extra reading each night for the graded online course, juggling lessons with schoolwork, golf team, Girl Scouts and robotics team.

“Reading some of the submissions that she had, it was like I was reading something from a college masters level course,” said her mother, Monica Kowalski.

Those who scored the highest in the online course were selected for the project in Houston.Vista Ridge High School assistant principal Jim Bonavita is proud that Kowalski will represent the school at NASA.

She leads by example, with a quiet confidence, he said.

“When she talks about her robotics, she’s so excited. You just see the light turn on,” Bonavita said.

Kowalski chose to attend Vista Ridge for its engineering program, which offers specialized engineering courses and the option to earn college credit. She hopes to attend college at the Colorado School of Mines, but for now, she’s excited to try her hand in aerospace engineering and meet women who have explored space.

“Engineering and science has kind of been a male thing in the past, and this project proves that women are starting to get more involved, which I think is awesome,” she said.

Vista Ridge High School student Brittany Kowalski was one of 40 girls across the country accepted into a week-long workshop through NASA’s Women in STEM High School Aerospace Scholar program. She leaves Sunday to spend a week at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. She will be a senior this year. Photo by Photo courtesy of Brittany Kowalski