Building Rockets and Building Confidence: Summer Rocketry 2026
We recently wrapped up another Summer Rocketry Program! Over two sessions, rising 6th-8th graders spent their summer days designing, building, and launching their own rockets.
Along with our Rocketry participants, the program was aided by Junior Mentors who came through the Mayor's Summer Youth Employment Program (MSYEP), which places high schoolers from across the city into paid summer roles. Watching our MSYEP interns guide younger participants through their first rocket build is why mentorship matters so much for girls in STEM. Our Junior Mentors are getting real leadership experience, and the participants get to see someone just a few years older modeling what's possible for them.
From the Classroom to Launch Pad
No day of this program looked the same. Our Summer Rocketry Program is a hands-on program by design, and our field trips throughout the session helped further bring classroom learning into the real world.
The classroom introduces physics and engineering concepts. A rocket launch puts physics into action, and a trip to the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the Christa McAuliffe Center at Framingham State University or the Museum of Science further shows participants that these same ideas power real careers, real research, and real history. Through the field trips, our girls got to simulate a space mission managing a Martian base, and see a model of the Apollo 11 command module.
After classroom and field trip learning, our participants put it all into practice by building model rockets. In our program, we build two types of rockets, water bottle rockets and engine powered rockets.
We start with water bottle rockets because they demonstrate the basic physics and engineering concepts before adding complexity. Using their lesson on the forces of flight (thrust, drag, gravity, weight), they got to work building. Nose cone size, fin shape and the perfect water to air ratio, every detail mattered to maximize hang time. Then came the fun part: launching them outside and comparing results across the group. Not every rocket stuck the landing (or the liftoff), but that's part of science. You have to experiment, troubleshoot, try again.
At the end of each session, our young rocket scientists' hard work culminated in launching an engine powered rocket. Just like with the water bottles rockets, design mattered especially with a parachute in the mix. Although engine powered rockets had more thrust, other conditions like wind pushed some rockets off course, and additional engine complexity meant a few rockets misfired entirely. But our participants walked away with something better than a perfect launch: real experience with the trial, error, and problem-solving that actual rocket science runs on.
Growing Alongside Each Other
Over the course of the two weeks, two sessions and dozens of rockets, what our participants built went beyond nose cones and fins design. They built confidence and resilience, and a real sense of thinking and problem-solving like a scientist. And our Junior Mentors grew right alongside them. By Session B, the same Junior Mentors who were finding their footing in Session A were leading with more confidence and a clearer sense of what it means to mentor someone younger. It's one of our favorite parts of the program to watch unfold.
That’s the whole point of our Summer Rocketry Program, not perfect rockets or perfect launches, but the growth that comes from building something yourself, watching it fail, and trying again anyways.
Our Summer Rocketry Program also caught the eye of local media — WHDH 7News and NBC10 both stopped by to capture our participants in action on Rocket Launch Day. A special thank you to Pamela Gardner and the NBC10 team for helping share our girls' work with the community. It's exactly the kind of visibility that helps more people see what girls in STEM can do, and helps us reach even more girls next summer.
Thank you to the funders who supported the 2026 Summer Rocketry Program, including Cambridge STEAM Initiative, Summer Fund at Philanthropy Massachusetts and IF/THEN of Lyda Hill Philanthropies.
