Seven learners from SA are holding onto gold after their Rockdonnell team took first place in an international schools engineering competition for a spacecraft designed to transport thousands of people around space!
South Africa (14 August 2026) – The cohort of South African high school learners has done something no African team has ever done before! Their team has won the world’s longest-running space engineering competition at the international finals hosted at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.
It was South Africa’s very first time competing.
The seven learners earned their place after standing out at South Africa’s inaugural Space Design Competition, which was held at the University of Cape Town earlier this year. Out of 109 learners representing nine schools, they were selected to become Team ZA and take on the International Space Settlement Design Competition.
The team includes Zayaan Abdurahman (Mondale High School), Joseph Allderman (Westerford High School), Benjamin Honigwachs (Bishops Diocesan College), Alaya Kaplen (Cannons Creek Independent School), Qaylah Omar (Cannons Creek Independent School), Ethan Schoombee (Fairmont High School) and Dean Weich (Bishops Diocesan College).
At the international finals, the learners weren’t competing for South Africa alone. Instead, the 238 participants from 17 countries were divided into four multinational ‘aerospace companies’.
Team ZA joined a company called Rockdonnell alongside learners from the United Kingdom, Australia, Brazil, China and two regions of the United States. It became the first team in the competition’s history to include representatives from every inhabited continent!
Over 48 hours, learners worked around the clock to design a spacecraft capable of carrying 3000 people between settlements across the inner Solar System. Their proposal, named Hermes, had to be presented to a client and then defended before a panel of judges.
When the results were announced, Rockdonnell had won!
South Africa’s young contestants played big roles throughout the challenge. Qaylah Omar was selected as one of the company’s presenters, while Benjamin Honigwachs, Joseph Allderman and Ethan Schoombee answered questions from the judges during the final defence of the design.
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“Team ZA worked so cohesively together that we all deserved this award. I was just the one who got picked to represent it.” he said, as per the South Africa Space Design Competition (ZASDC).
The win is a milestone for South Africa’s STEM community, and it shows just how far our young minds can go when given real opportunities.
“We did not create these young people. They were already out there. 84% of South Africa’s largest companies say they cannot find the skilled people they need. 60.9% of South Africans aged 15 to 24 are unemployed. Both of those things are true at the same time, and this week seven teenagers showed exactly what sits in the gap between them.” shared the ZASDC.
Next year, there are plans to expand the regional competition into the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, with ambitions to eventually reach all nine provinces.
Coming home as world champions is an incredible way to represent the country at one of the world’s toughest school engineering competitions. South Africa’s young minds have earned their spot amongst the stars!
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