SpaceX successfully launched its commercial rocket today marking the first time a private company has sent a spacecraft to the space station. The Falcon 9 rocket along with the Dragon capsule is loaded with the hopes and dreams of hundreds of students from around the USA.
The Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP), launched June 2010 by the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education (NCESSE) in partnership with NanoRacks, LLC, is an important U.S. national Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education initiative that gives students across a community the ability to design and propose real experiments to fly in low Earth orbit, first aboard the final flights of the Space Shuttle, and then on the International Space Station (ISS)—America’s newest National Laboratory.
The SpaceX Falcon/Dragon ship launch successfully marks a new era in commercial space transportation. It will deliver cargo, for now, and astronauts later, saving money for NASA and the government.
Wired magazine has an excellent series on the SpaceX program as well as its own portal on commercial space efforts called ‘Open Space’ run by Betsy Mason, Jason Paur, Adam Mann, and Dave Mosher. Brandon Keim did a fun Star Trek post on Could a 21st Century USS Enterprise Really Fly? that is worth reading, although I don’t think it is technically in the Open Space section.
Here is a simple list of the student projects. For a full breakdown, you can visit the SSEP website where each proposal summary is listed. Most of the projects are biology or chemistry projects from grades five through 16.
The SSEP Review Process and Board
For Mission 1 to ISS, a total of 41,200 grade 5-14 students in the 12 participating communities were given the opportunity to design real experiments to fly aboard the ISS. There were a total of 779 proposals submitted by student teams, with 382 forwarded for review by SSEP Step 1 Review Boards in the communities.
The review goes well beyond what is typical of reviews for professional research proposals given there was a deep recognition that the process, and the comments back, were vitally important teachable moments for the student researchers that worked so hard on their proposals. SSEP wants to immerse students in real science. The review process is very much a part of real science and that process therefore needs to be transparent, and a learning experience.
The review board consists of an expert team from universities to government agencies like the NIH.
Image Credit: SpaceX and Livestream during launch.
SpaceX Rocket Launch Aborted in Last Minute by Marcia Dunn, AP Aerospace writer published in wistv.com.
Space.com reported Space Spiders and Wine: The Weird Science Projects Onboard the SpaceX Capsule.
From the NYTIMES: Testing Private Ship to the Space Station, and Wine, Too by Kenneth Chang
‘In space, how quickly does grape juice turn to wine? Two California high school students hope to find out soon. Their experiment is one of 15 aboard a rocket scheduled to blast off early Saturday from Cape Canaveral, Fla., to the International Space Station. “We think it’s going to ferment faster,” said Max Holden, a ninth grader at Chaminade College Preparatory in West Hills, Calif.
But there is no guarantee that the seven-inch tube of yeast and grape juice will ever reach its destination.’