The Microgravity Project is part of Mission 17 of the Student Spaceflight Experiment Program (SSEP). The goal of SSEP is to provide students with an opportunity to participate in America’s Space Program, where they become architects of a project to be conducted in space by astronauts on the International Space Station. As previously announced, the winning team’s proposal was “How Does Microgravity Affect the Germination of Oyster Mushroom Spawns (Pleurotus ostreatus).”

Most recently, the science department collaborated with the Long Beach Director of the Arts and the K-12 Art Departments on the Mission Patch Art and Design Contest. The two winners were third grader Mackenzie Pastuch from Lindell Elementary School and fifth grader Emilia Conneally from West Elementary School.

In June 2023, mission patches will be launched to the ISS, along with the science experiment designed by the sixth-grade students, and the patches will return to Long Beach with embossed certificates. Onboard the ISS, the patches and experiment will fly at an altitude of 260 miles above Earth’s surface. This is 47 times higher than Mt. Everest and will travel 400,000 miles each day!

The Student Spaceflight Experiments Program is a program of the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education (NCESSE) in the U.S. and the Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Space Education Internationally. It is enabled through a strategic partnership with Nanoracks, LLC, which is working with NASA under a Space Act Agreement as part of the utilization of the International Space Station as a National Laboratory.

Date Added: 4/4/2024