Brad Truxillo, a freshman majoring in electrical engineering at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, spent some of his summer working on hybrid rockets with NASA.
Truxillo, from Metairie, La., participated in an eight-week internship program at the John C. Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.
He built a hybrid rocket using oxygen and Plexiglas as fuel and also helped organize and collect engineering data from multiple projects He cataloged this info into NASA’s database
Truxillo graduated from East Jefferson High School as co-valedictorian. NASA’s internship program is part of its education strategy to attract and retain students in the science, technology, engineering and math disciplines critical to its missions.