Student Spaceflight Experiment Project

The SD43 community invites all students, K-12, to participate in designing a Mission Patch. Mission patches have been part of human spaceflight since the days of project Mercury in  the 1960’s. The student spaceflight experiments program {SSEP} Mission patch competition therefore allows communities to engage in another authentic aspect of the space program.


The goal is to come up with an experiment that well help the benefit of the future expeditions in space. However, the experiment must be a certain amount and size to fit in a small tube given from NASA. NASA will choose the top proposal and it will be taken to space. There will be two of the same chosen experiment. One to conduct in space by the crew and the other one will be conducted on earth by the wining group members. Once the experiment returns from space, it will be observed to see if the proposal hypothesis worked and what the effects of the no gravity were on the experiment.


Groups Experiment Proposal:

In a group of four students and myself. Our proposal title was the Effects of microgravity on the structure of fungus. The main concept of the proposal was based on Enoki mushrooms. Mushrooms can be beneficial to

Enoki Mushroom
                Enokitaka Mushrooms

decomposing as they are primary decomposers of animals and plants. We wanted to know how Enoki mushrooms would grow in space. Learning more about the way things grow will help with the exploration of space by knowing if micro gravity has adverse effect on the growth, structure, or health.  Our Hypothesis is, Enoki mushrooms will grow taller and without specific direction when in an environment of low gravity. The end goal of our project is to examine how microgravity affects the structure of an organism.


More info on SSEP↵

http://ssep.ncesse.org

http://ncesse.org/programs/student-spaceflight-experiments-program