KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WATE) – One East Tennessee Girl Scout earned a new badge to put on her vest that is considered “out of this world.”

“I like doing STEM activities,” said 11-year-old Gracie Ogle, a fifth grader at Ball Camp Elementary School. 

Ogle is the only Girl Scout in Tennessee to win the “Girl Scouts to the Moon and Back” essay contest. She wrote the essay to get her Girl Scouts in Space Badge.

“I wanted to get it because I would learn more about space and I would also learn more about the planets,” Ogle said.

Along with her essay, Ogle created a model of the Mars rover, drew a spacewalk around her neighborhood out of chalk and learned the names of each planet in the solar system. She even knows how much each planet weighs.

Ogle said she worked hard to get the badge. She shares that this badge is particularly special because it traveled to space on the NASA Artemis I Mission.

NASA Artemis I Mission launched from Kennedy Space Center back in November. The spacecraft along with the badge traveled 1.4 million miles at the speed of 24,000 miles an hour and orbited the moon.

“It’s really cool and I’m really excited about it,” Ogle said.

Along with her badge, Ogle also received a special surprise from Y-12 which worked with NASA back in the 60s.

“This is one of the original moon boxes that was developed and created by Y-12 back in the 60s. So we’ve opened it up and in these boxes are all types of items like these containers where samples of the moon would go and then we would seal it up, lock it up and then send it back to earth,” Gene Patterson with Y-12 said.

As for Ogle’s own space exploration, she said space is really not for her. She shared with WATE that her mind was set on another out-of-this-world career, an engineer.

Ogle comes from a long line of accomplished girl scouts. Her mother is a “Silver Award Girl Scout” and a lifetime member, and her grandmother was a service unit manager in the 90s.

Both Ogle’s mother and grandmother were present as she received her award.