Williamsville's Mill Middle students are headed to a national competition after creating their own concept for a city on the moon.

NEWS 4 reports Mill Middle 8th graders after being forced to meet virtually for months, have engineered their idea of a city in a place that has no breathable atmosphere, along with constant exposure to solar radiation, no ready access to water, and more.

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It's all part of one of the top engineering education programs in the country for middle schoolers called future city competition.

The 10 students involved in the effort spent up to 10 hours of their own time every week working on this, since last September.

They had to come up with a means of lunar transportation, housing, and more.

The team says it’s helped them realize what they want to do when they’re older.

“I’d always kind of wanted to do some sore of engineering, but it was a really good way to kind of learn more about it and actually get to do stuff that engineers do with designing the city and working on it and coming up with solutions for problems,” student Matthew Guercil said.

Team recently won the regional competition and now they’re headed to the finals which will happen virtually this year.

Before Covid teams would meet in Washington DC for finals.

The grand prize includes a trip to the U.S. Space Camp and $7,500 to their school’s *STEM program.

*STEM is a curriculum based on the idea of educating students in four specific disciplines — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — in an interdisciplinary and applied approach.

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