Student Spaceflight experiments Project:
Project title: Does cheese decompose and age differently in space than on Earth?
About The SSEP: The SSEP gives you an opportunity for you to build/design something for astronauts to do research in the ISS (International Space Station). It takes you to a learning community for creating a model for the STEM/STEAM education. A participating city/town will compete against other schools made of student teams.
Proposal summary:
The purpose of putting different cheese in space is to see what would happen as they decompose compared to earth. Our experiment will measure the amount of mold and fungus that decomposes the cheese, releasing carbon dioxide and reducing the cheese’s mass. We will measure the amount of cheese that we are left with and how much mold is visible on the cheese, and compare it to our examples on earth. We will include 3 different cheeses based on their pH levels which affect the growth rate of mold, Brie (pH: 6.2-6.5), Swiss (pH: 5.5-5.7), and Cheddar cheese(ph: 4.6-4.9). Each piece of cheese will be separated into different sections with a size of (approx 25 grams). This experiment is important because astronauts will need calcium and other vitamins in dairy products, so we are going to test to see the shelf life and amount of mold grown over time. When we get our experiment back, we will compare the weight, amount of visible mold, and smell of the cheeses.