“I don’t know [what my dream job would be]. It would probably be something that would help humanity go forwards, and a big interest of mine is space settlement: getting humanity to the planets, the stars, stuff like that. Right now there isn’t really that much demand for putting people in space, but hopefully someday soon. I know Elon Musk is trying to put people on Mars in the next few years, but I think he’s definitely being optimistic with that time line. Recently I put in a submission for the NASA Ames Space Settlement competition. I wrote this 53-page report. There’s a table of contents and lots of citations. [It took me] probably about a month at two hours a day. I’m probably not going to get grand prize and stuff because that’s always for people who really have the time and go to the top. But maybe I might win something.”

A month later, Mori found out that he got first place in the 9th-grade individual category of the space competition. There were 2,500 other submissions to the contest. The name of his submission, Iter ad Astra, is Latin for “Journey to the Stars”, which is what he hopes to accomplish.