The group called “From Island to NASA”, consisting of 11th grade students Gülce Erayman, Fatma Önkol, Ceylin Erayman and Benan Özcan in Gaziantep, participated in the NASA Space Center Competition (NASA Space APP Challenge) in August 2025 by applying the hydroponic and aeroponic methods that NASA had previously tried in space, to the blue lotus flower.
In the competition, students who were among the 1 percent of participants under the age of 18 among 3 million projects received the title of “Future Project” with their “Galactic Problem Solver”.
With their success, the students received an invitation to the International Space Settlement Design Competition held in November 2025 and were among the top 4 teams in the competition in which teams from 175 countries participated with the “Manned Space Vehicle Design for Venus” project.
Students participating in the 12-person combined team, which also includes international students, will represent Türkiye in the final to be held in Florida, USA in July 2026.
Team captain Gülce Erayman said that they were proud to participate in the competitions and be successful.
Stating that they will continue their work, Erayman said:
“They will give us NASA-approved certificates, medals and an Artemis statue. They will also distribute certain scholarship funds. They will provide us with reference letters for their universities, universities abroad and here. We were in constant communication during our one-year study period. The four of us came to the school and worked together, and maybe in the evenings, we worked together via Zoom video. We all distributed the subjects, were aware of each other, evaluated equally and carried out our work.”
Erayman stated that they will continue to participate in different competitions with new projects and said:
“Even if we come first, we can continue this competition again in our next process. We also receive invitations to apply to universities abroad, and we apply to them as well. We will enter the application process. We would like to state that we will also enter international and national competitions after this one-year process and in the following processes. I would like to state that we will participate in some TÜBİTAK and NASA competitions.”
School principal Gaffari Bayram also said that the students liked and supported the project when he told them about it.
Stating that it is a source of pride for the students to represent Türkiye, Bayram said:
“We will try to give them all the support we can. We will move forward with them. I hope they will return from America as world champions. During this period, they started to receive acceptance from many universities, which is a pleasant situation for us. As I said, we will continue to be with our children in the future.”
