Springfield Science Experiment Will Be Launched to the International Space Station

SPRINGFIELD, NJ — Students throughout the Springfield Public School district are set to begin our second exciting opportunity to engage in a real science experience, as part of the national Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP).

Small teams of students from grades 5 through 12 will research and submit a formal proposal for a microgravity experiment.

One experiment will be selected from Springfield to be among 21 districts in the US and Canada that will have their experiments launched to the International Space Station in mid-2017 as part of SSEP Mission 11.

The SSEP is sponsored by the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education (NCESSE), a non-profit organization that hopes to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers by engaging their natural human impulse to ask questions and explore the world around them.

Dr. Jeff Goldstein, the director of the NCESSE and the creator of SSEP, has noted, “SSEP is designed to empower the student as scientist, within the real-world context of science. Student teams design a real experiment, propose a real flight opportunity, experience a formal proposal review, and go through a NASA flight safety review. SSEP is about introducing real science to our children, and if you give them a chance to be scientists, stand back and be amazed.”

Commencing in early September 2016, Springfield students will begin to explore physical forces and the concept of microgravity in science classes. For 9 weeks, from September 6 to November 4, small teams of students in each class will select an area (biological, chemical, or physical) to research and propose an experiment that will test the effects of microgravity on a system of their choosing. In mid-November, a local team of educators and community scientists/engineers will come together to for a Review

Board that will select three proposals for submission to a national selection committee. That committee will ultimately select one of the experiments from Springfield to be transported in mid-2017 to the International Space Station (ISS). The experiment will eventually be returned to the student team at Springfield for analysis.

Students in Springfield (Kindergarten through grade 12) will also compete in a competition to design a mission patch that will be transported to the ISS. Ultimately two patches will be selected from those created in art classes throughout the district schools.

Mr. Gregory Salmon, Springfield’s Supervisor of Science and the director of its SSEP initiative, notes that this second mission will provide students another opportunity to create and test an experiment that represents their interests.

He notes “students will be able to actively involve themselves in the process of science. This process will likely inspire more students to continue their studies of the different fields of science and engineering as they decide on future courses and career choices.”

One of the design challenges is that all elements of each experiment must fit inside the small “mini-lab” apparatus. Students will conduct a simultaneous “ground truth” experiment in their classroom in order to be able to compare the results on Earth to those in a microgravity environment on the ISS.

Mr. Salmon further explained that the challenge student teams face in choosing a topic to study, and preparing a formal research proposal, will engage them not only in developing important science skills, but also involve them in writing, research, reading, mathematical analysis, and presentation. Students (and their teachers as mentors throughout the process) will be following one of the key components of the new science standards: “a shift in the focus from merely memorizing scientific facts to actually doing science—so students will spend more time posing questions and discovering the answers for themselves.” (from the National Science Teachers Association, http://ngss.nsta.org/less-memorizing.aspx).

As a final note, Mr. Salmon is looking for volunteers to be a part of the Review Board to select the three Springfield finalists.

If you (or anyone you know) are a local educator, scientist, or engineer, contact Mr. Salmon and leave your information by calling 973-376- 1025 x5332 or email gsalmon@springfieldschools.com.

The Review Board will meet around the 2nd week of November at Jonathan Dayton High School.

The Student Space Flight Experiments Program (http://ssep.ncesse.org) is undertaken by the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education (http://ncesse.org) in partnership with Nanoracks, LLC. This on-orbit educational 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.

(Image via Morguefile)

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