WAGGA'S young scientific minds had the chance to rub shoulders with five NASA scientists today.
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The two-day program filled with presentations, workshops and excursions is allowing students explore their passions in all things space, science and technology.
The city has been used as a launchpad for the regional program organised by One Giant Leap, which hopes to bring big opportunities to regional children who often miss out on exploring their passions in this line of work.
Director Bob Carpenter said the program's presenters are passionate about their careers, which are by no means "mundane".
"The interest here is fantastic because what we are about is showing the kids the jobs of the future," he said.
"While we have the NASA JPL scientists out here, we are not trying to recruit people for NASA. We are showing these kids the type of jobs available in Australia.
"We want to inspire them to keep up their studies so that one day this could be the type of job they'll be doing in the future."
Wagga's Lachlan Bruce, who is 11-years old, has a keen interest in physics and coding, which he was able to explore during day one of the program.
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"The circuit box workshop was what I was looking forward to the most," he said.
"Because we know the world is getting more robots to do their jobs and one day they will take over, but we need someone to do the coding to stop them completely taking over the world."
Lachlan said the presentations by the NASA scientists was an eye-opener to the amount of knowledge people have yet to discover.
Josh Brewster, who is 16-years-old, travelled from Albury for the "unreal opportunity" to meet the scientists. His dream is to one day become an engineer and work on with spacecrafts or aeronautical systems.
"I was pretty interested in the model rocket workshop, but also the talks from the scientists who talked about the Apollo missions, the upcoming Artemis mission, satellites and rovers," he said.
Josh said it was a privilege to listen to the scientists talk about the expeditions that many people do not learn about.