One of dozens of high-powered rockets lifts off on April 16, 2016, during NASA's 16th annual Student Launch challenge, held near Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama from April 13-16.

Nearly 50 middle and high school, college and university teams from 22 states competed in the challenge, demonstrating advanced aerospace and engineering skills related to real-world activities and programs on NASA's Journey to Mars. Teams spent the past eight months building and testing rockets designed to fly to an altitude of one mile, deploy an automated parachute system, and land safe enough for reuse, while other teams also designed scientific payloads for data collection during flight.

Preliminary winners for Student Launch were announced during an awards ceremony April 16, at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, and hosted by Orbital ATK. The overall winners of Student Launch will be announced in early May, as the final calculations are still under review for accuracy.