Brookfield Academy senior sees her future in the stratosphere

High School Hot Shot - Ayushi Chandel

Her tennis racquet has helped her qualify for state, so it's not rocket science as to why this young athlete is this week's FOX6 High School Hot Shot.

BROOKFIELD, Wis. - Her tennis racquet has helped her qualify for state, so it's not rocket science as to why this young athlete is this week's FOX6 High School Hot Shot.

"I fell in love with aerospace engineering when I was five years old," said Ayushi Chandel. "When I went to the Kennedy Space Center for the first time, I saw the model of Atlantis down in Florida, and I just knew that that's what I was going to do, and I was going to build one of those."

The Brookfield Academy senior may be a good athlete on the court, but it's her academic life that is taking Chandel to new heights.

Chandel is the Wisconsin Junior Classical League parliamentarian.

She is working on a project that is set to figure out the amount of aerosols in the atmosphere.

Chandel and three other girls launched a box into the stratosphere with a weather balloon.

"The launch was livestreamed, so we were able to watch that and kind of just like track it and just watch it," Chandel said. "Yeah, it was like, wow, we built that and that's going up."

Chandel also volunteers at the Milwaukee Public Museum in the planetarium, and she's working to obtain a pilot's license.

"I guess I've just really been interested and just really understanding, especially with physics, understanding how everything works," she said.

Chandel is also a student researcher with the Wisconsin Space Grant Consortium at Carthage College, where she's working on three different projects.