PRESS
RELEASE
310.450.8338, ext. 73501 03 OCT 2012
SMMUSD
STUDENTS SEND EXPERIMENTS INTO SPACE
A microgravity experiment designed by students
from Lincoln Middle School and Santa Monica High School has been chosen as a real research mini-laboratory
scheduled to fly on the International Space Station.
These students participated
in a local Flight Experiment Design Competition that included over 300 competitors
and was hosted by the Student Spaceflight Experiments
Program (SSEP), a remarkable 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, America’s newest
National Laboratory.
The
competing teams submitted formal flight experiment proposals, and a formal
proposal review process selected the flight experiment for the community. A suite of programs leverages the flight
experiment design competition to engage the entire community, including a
mission patch art and design competition.
The winning team is comprised of Principal Investigator
and Santa Monica High School student Cindy Yen, along with collaborators
Francis Abastillas, Dean Chien,
Matilda Loughmiller, Alex Soohoo,
Roman Valentine, and Jane Cho Watts.
Their experiment is entitled, “What Is the Effect of Microgravity on the Formation of Silly Putty and
How Do the Characteristics of That Silly Putty Differ from the Silly Putty Made
on Earth?”
This experiment, along with
ten other SSEP Mission
2 to ISS microgravity experiments, will be carried by SpaceX-1 to the ISS, packaged in a
payload box called Antares. Eleven
communities participated in SSEP Mission 2 to ISS; the eleven selected
experiments are the culmination of 3,930 students immersed in experiment
design, and 1,125 flight experiment proposals received from student teams. Mission 2 flight experiment proposal
summaries can be found at:
http://ssep.ncesse.org/communities/experiments-selected-for-flight/selected-experiments-on-ssep-mission-2-to-iss/
Accompanying
the Mission 2 experiments will be twenty-one Mission Patches to capture the
community experience in the eleven communities that participated in Mission 2
to ISS; these twenty-one patches were selected from 5,960 submitted across all
eleven communities. For more information, go to: http://ssep.ncesse.org/communities/mission-patches/mission-patches-on-mission-2-to-the-international-space-station/
Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP):
SSEP is committed to student ownership in exploration, to
science as journey, and to the joys of learning. For school districts, it
provides an opportunity to implement a systemic, high caliber, and historic
STEM education program.
SSEP
is undertaken by the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education
(NCESSE) in partnership with NanoRacks LLC. This
on-orbit research opportunity is enabled through NanoRacks
LLC, which is working in partnership with NASA under a Space Act Agreement as
part of the utilization of the International Space Station as a National
Laboratory.
SSEP is about immersing
and engaging students
and their teachers in real science – on the high frontier – so that
students are
given the chance to be scientists and experience science firsthand.
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SANTA
MONICA-MALIBU UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT
1651
16TH Street, Santa Monica, CA 90404
ph:
310.450.8338; fax: 310.581.1138
www.smmusd.org