The National Center for Earth and Space Science Education and the Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Space Education have announced Mission 10 to the International Space Station. The Students Spaceflight Experiment Program is a STEAM education opportunity that immerses grade 5-16 students across a community in an authentic, high visibility research experience, where student teams design and propose real microgravity experiments to fly in low Earth orbit on the International Space Station. Each participating community will be provided a real microgravity research mini-laboratory capable of supporting a single experiment, and all launch services to fly the experiment to the International Space Station in Fall 2016. The experiment will then be returned safely to Earth for student harvesting and analysis.
All interested communities are asked to inquire by December 11, 2015 in order to allow schools/districts the time needed to assess interest with staff and, if appropriate, move forward with an Implementation Plan. Communities must be on board by February 15, 2016 for a 9-week experiment design and proposal writing phase from February 22 to April 22, 2016. The flight experiment will be selected by May 26, 2016. To inquire more information or submit a proposal, please contact Dr. Jeff Goldstein, SSEP Program Director, either by cell (301-395-0770) or email ([email protected]). The informative SSEP homepage can be found here.